BT  15  . R36  1902 
Randolph,  Alfred  Magill, 
1836-1918 . 

Reason,  faith  and  authority 

— i  rt v  i  c+-i  o  vi  tJ-j; _ 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/reasonfaithautho00rand_0 


Reason,  Faith  and  Authority 

in  Christianity 


Being  the  Paddock  Lectures  for  1901-02 


By 

ALFRED  MAGILL  RANDOLPH,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Bishop  of  Southern  Virginia 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  WHITTAKER 
2  and  3  Bible  House 


Copyright,  1902 
By  THOMAS  WHITTAKER. 


Preface 


These  lectures  on  the  relations  between  Reason, 
Faith,  and  Authority,  were  delivered  before  the 
students  and  professors  in  the  chapel  of  the  General 
Theological  Seminary  in  New  York  in  December, 
1901,  and  February,  1902. 

They  are  published  under  the  conditions  prescribed 
in  the  Paddock  Foundation.  Portions  omitted  for 
want  of  time  when  they  were  delivered,  appear  in  the 
printed  Lectures. 

A  few  notes  are  appended  developing  some  im¬ 
portant  principles  compressed  into  sentences  in  the 
text.  I  have  also  introduced  in  the  Lectures,  and 
especially  in  the  notes,  extracts  from  masters  of  style 
and  luminous  thinking,  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
younger  generation  of  the  clergy  to  books  'which  may 
be  helpful,  educative  and  inspiring.  The  constant 
pressure  of  the  pulpit  for  literary  production  may  lead 
to  the  formation  of  the  habit  of  slipshod  methods  of 
expression  as  well  as  crudities  of  thought.  For  in¬ 
telligent  laymen,  as  well  as  for  the  clergy,  time  is  too 
short  for  communion  through  books  with  any  but  the 
best  minds. 


3 


4 


PREFACE 


While  I  am  writing  this  prefatory  note  the  in¬ 
telligence  reaches  me  of  the  death  of  Dr.  Eugene 
Augustus  Hoffmann,  for  twenty-two  years  the  Dean  of 
the  Seminary.  That  Seminary  with  its  noble  build¬ 
ings,  library  and  equipment,  is  in  great  degree  a 
monument  to  his  unstinted  generosity,  his  laborious 
fidelity,  his  practical  abilities,  his  love  of  the  beauti¬ 
ful,  and  above  all,  his  consecration  to  Christ  and  to 
His  church. 

The  responsibility  of  the  generation  of  clergy, 
educated  under  his  administration,  for  his  example  and 
the  spiritual  influence  of  his  simplicity  and  godly  sin¬ 
cerity,  I  can  only  estimate  by  my  own  experience  as  a 
guest  in  his  home.  May  God  bless  his  memory  and 
keep  it  green. 


THE 


BISHOP  PADDOCK  LECTURES. 

Ih  the  summer  of  the  year  1880,  George  A.  Jar¬ 
vis,  of  Brooklyn,  H.  Y.,  moved  by  his  sense  of  the 
great  good  which  might  thereby  accrue  to  the  cause 
of  Christ,  and  to  the  Church  of  which  he  was  an 
ever-grateful  member,  gave  to  the  General  Theolog¬ 
ical  Seminary  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
certain  securities,  exceeding  in  value  eleven  thousand 
dollars,  for  the  foundation  and  maintenance  of  a  Lec¬ 
tureship  in  said  seminary. 

Out  of  love  for  a  former  pastor  and  enduring 
friend,  the  Eight  Eev.  Benjamin  Henry  Paddock, 
D.D.,  Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  he  named  the  founda¬ 
tion  “  The  Bishop  Paddock  Lectureship.’’ 

The  deed  of  trust  declares  that, — 

“  The  subjects  of  the  lectures  shall  be  such  as  appertain  to  the  defense 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  revealed  in  the  Holy  Bible ,  and 
illustrated  in  the  Boole  of  Common  Prayer ,  against  the  varying  errors 
of  the  day,  whether  materialistic,  rationalistic,  or  professedly  religious, 
and  also  to  its  defense  and  confirmation  in  respect  of  such  central 
truths  as  the  Trinity ,  the  Atonement,  Justification ,  and  the  Inspiration 
of  the  Word  of  God  ;  and  of  such  central  facts  as  the  Church's  Divine 
Order  and  Sacraments ,  her  historical  Reformation ,  and  her  rights  and 
powers  as  a  pure  and  national  Church.  And  other  subjects  may  be 
chosen  if  unanimously  approved  by  the  Board  of  Appointment  as 
being  both  timely  and  also  within  the  true  intent  of  this  lectureship.” 


o 


6 


THE  BISHOP  PADDOCK  LECTURES 


Under  the  appointment  of  the  board  created  by  the 
Trust,  the  Eight  Bev.  Alfred  Magill  Eandolph,  Bishop 
of  Southern  Virginia,  delivered  the  Lectures  for  the 
year  1901-02,  which  are  contained  in  this  volume. 


LECTURERS. 

1881.  The  Rt.  Rev.  John  Williams,  DD.,  LL.D.,  “The  English 

Reformation.” 

1882.  The  Rev.  John  Cotton  Smith,  D.D.,*  “  Relations  of  Religions 

Belief  and  Philosophical  Opinions.” 

1883.  The  Rev.  Wm.  D.  Wilson,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  L.H.D.,  “TheMethods 

of  Natural  Theology  Vindicated  against  Modern  Objections.” 

1884.  The  Rt.  Rev.  A.  N.  Littlejohn,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Long 

Island,  “The  Christian  Ministry  at  the  Close  of  the  Nine¬ 
teenth  Century.” 

1885.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  C.  Lay,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Easton, 

“The  Rights  and  Powers  of  the  Particular  or  National 
Church.” 

1886.  The  Rev.  William  H.  Platt,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  “The  Philosophy 

of  the  Supernatural.” 

1887.  The  Rev.  John  H.  Egar,  D.D.,  “  The  History  of  Christendom, 

Ecclesiastical  and  Political,  from  Constantine  to  the  Reforma¬ 
tion.” 

1888.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Hugh  Miller  Thompson,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop 

of  Mississippi,  “Christ’s  Doctrine  of  Development.” 

1889.  The  Rev.  Edward  Hurtt  Jewett,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  “  Diabolology 

— the  Person  and  Kingdom  of  Satan.” 

1890.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Hollingworth  Tully  Kingdon,  D.D.,  Bishop 

of  Fredericton,  N.  B.,  “God  Incarnate.” 

1891.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Benjamin  Henry  Paddock,  D.D.,  Bishop  of 

Massachusetts.* 

1892.  The  Rev.  Morgan  Dix,  D.D.,  D.C.L.,  “The  Sacramental 

System  Considered  as  the  Extension  of  the  Incarnation.” 

1893.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Arthur  Cleveland  Coxe,  D.D.,  LL.  D.,  Bishop 

of  Western  New  York,  “The  Repose  of  the  Blessed  Dead.”f 

1894.  The  Rev.  C.  W.  E.  Body,  D.D.,  D.C.L.,  “The  Permanent 

Value  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  as  an  Integral  Part  of  Divine 
Revelation.” 


*Died  before  delivering  the  Lectures. 


tNot  published. 


THE  BISHOP  PADDOCK  LECTURES 


< 

1895.  The  Rev.  Robert  B.  Fair  bairn,  D.D.,  LL.D..  “The  Influ¬ 

ence  of  Philosophy  and  Logic  on  the  Revealed  Facts  of  Chris¬ 
tian  Redemption.” 

1896.  The  Rev.  Arthur  James  Mason,  D.D.,  “  The  Conditions  of 

onr  Lord’s  Life  upon  Earth,  as  set  Forth  in  the  Gospels.” 

1897.  The  Rt.  Rev.  John  Dowden.  D.D.,  Lord  Bishop  of  Edinburgh, 

‘  ‘  The  Theological  Literature  of  the  Sixteenth,  Seventeenth, 
and  Eighteenth  Centuries.  ’  ’ 

1893.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Thomas  Frank  Gailor,  D.D.,  Bishop  Coad¬ 
jutor  of  Tennessee,  “  Liturgy  and  Dogma.”  * 

1899.  The  Rt.  Rev.  James  Dow  Morrison.  D.D..  LL.D.,  Missionary 

Bishop  of  Duluth,  “  The  Attitude  of  the  Church  towards  Holy 
Scripture,  the  Creeds,  and  the  Sacred  Ministry.” 

1900.  The  Rev.  Charles  W.  Shields,  D.D.,  “Professor  of  the 

Harmony  of  Science  and  Revealed  Religion,”  in  Princeton 
University,  N.  J.,  “Scientific  Evidences  of  Revealed  Re¬ 
ligion.” 

1901-2.  The  Rt.  Rev.  Alfred  Magill  Randolph,  D.D.,  Bishop  of 
Southern  Virginia,  “  Reason,  Faith  and  Authority  in  Chris¬ 
tianity.” 


*  Not  delivered. 


Contents 


I. 

II. 

in. 

iv. 

v. 

VI. 


Reason  and  Faith  . 
Faith  and  Reason  . 
Faith  and  Reason  . 
Authority  in  Religion 


13 

53 

93 

131 


Authority—The  Divinity  of  Christ  .  169 
Authority — The  Humanity  of  Christ,  209 


Notes  to  Lectures 

1.  The  Theology  of  Feeling . 255 

2.  The  Theology  of  the  Will . 257 

3.  Mind  in  Nature :  Evolution . 259 

4.  Relations  of  Christianity  to  the  Religions  of  the  World,  261 

5.  Prevalence  of  Nescience  Philosophy  ....  263 

6.  Definition  of  Agnosticism . 264 

7.  Imagination  Delusive  Faculty — Gladstone  and  Butler,  265 

8.  Balfour  and  Professor  Wallace  on  Reason  .  .  .  268 

9.  Causes  of  Asceticism . 269 

10.  Bishop  Lightfoot  on  German  Criticism  .  .  .  270 


9 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


LECTTTKE  I 


REASON  AND  FAITH 

Introductory.  St.  Peter’s  charge  to  give  a  reason  for  faith.  Reason 
defined.  Its  relation  to  other  faculties  of  the  mind.  The  mean¬ 
ing  of  heart  in  Scripture  inoludes  reason.  Theology  of  reason  ; 
of  feeling  ;  of  faith  ;  of  the  will.  Confusion  in  theology  and 
philosophy  from  false  psychology.  Kant’s  analysis  of  reason. 
Reason  implicit  in  all  the  faculties  of  the  mind.  Common  sense 
unconscious  reason.  Belief  in  God  an  intuition  of  reason.  Un¬ 
reasonable  use  of  reason.  Psychology  dividing  mind  into  sepa¬ 
rate  faculties  imaginary.  Reason  in  relation  to  the  ideas  of 
natural  religion.  Revelation.  Refutation  of  materialistic  phi¬ 
losophy  denying  its  possibility.  Dr.  Morison  on  nature  pointing 
to  revelation.  Prayer  constant  quantity  in  all  religions.  Its 
reasonableness  instinctively  recognized.  Suppression  of  reason¬ 
able  convictions  results  in  pessimism  ;  Renan  ;  Goethe.  Fallacy 
of  separation  between  natural  and  revealed  religion  in  old  theolo¬ 
gies  upon  ground  that  first  is  comprehensible  by  the  reason,  and 
the  second  incomprehensible,  and  to  be  received  by  authority 
alone.  Natural  religion  a  lower  form  of  revelation,  not  a  product 
of  reason  but  apprehended  by  it.  Revealed  religion  assimilates 
germs  of  truth  in  all  false  religions.  Every  truth  in  natural  re¬ 
ligion  transformed  in  the  light  of  reasonable  faith  by  Christianity. 
The  incarnation  reasonable,  natural.  Browning  on  incarnation. 
Answers  human  needs.  Canon  Gore  on  Romanes.  Reason  in  re¬ 
lation  to  personal  experience.  The  spiritual  intelligence  alone 
apprehending  inspiration  of  Scripture.  Reasons  for  faith. 

In  the  position  of  an  American  bishop,  with  the 
care  of  many  churches  and  the  duties  and  activities 
outside  of  those  pertaining  to  his  own  special  field  of 

13 


14 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


labor,  one  might  well  hesitate  to  accept  a  call  to  de¬ 
liver  a  series  of  lectures  to  learned  professors  who 
have  dedicated  their  lives  to  the  study  of  philosophy 
and  theology,  and  to  a  body  of  students  representing 
the  intelligence  and  education  of  the  younger  gen¬ 
eration  of  the  Church.  In  a  time,  like  the  present,  of 
theological  change  and  reconstruction,  it  is  not  an  easy 
task  to  avoid  a  sacrifice  of  sympathy  from  those 
whom  we  address  upon  religious  problems  ;  and  with¬ 
out  the  sympathy  of  an  open  mind,  lecturing,  preach¬ 
ing  and  teaching  are  like  toiling  against  wind  and 
tide.  Among  brethren  of  the  same  blessed  commun¬ 
ion,  in  a  Church  with  wide  charity  and  reasonable 
toleration  of  varieties  of  opinion  within  the  limits  of 
the  faith  of  the  Gospel  as  she  has  received  it,  I  am 
sure  this  apprehension  may  be  dismissed,  especially 
when  I  remember  that  I  stand  before  the  university 
school  of  that  Church  representing  all  of  our  dioceses, 
and  reaching  with  its  thought  and  its  life  our  whole 
country  and  foreign  lands  throughout  the  world. 

Since  I  was  honored  with  the  request  to  deliver  the 
course  of  lectures  upon  the  Paddock  Foundation  I 
have  more  than  once  wished  for  a  longer  period 
of  time  for  preparation.  When  Prof.  Alexander 
Campbell  Frazer  of  Edinburgh  was  invited  to  deliver 
the  “  Gilford  Lectures  ”  upon  the  “  Philosophy  of 
Theism,”  in  the  opening  sentences  of  his  valuable 
contribution  to  philosophical  literature,  he  describes 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


15 


his  feelings,  when  the  call  reached  him,  by  reference 
to  “  the  philosophic  caution  of  Simonides  when  he 
was  asked  what  God  was,  in  first  demanding  a  day 
to  think  about  the  answer,  then  two  days  more ;  and 
after  that  continuously  redoubling  the  required  time 
when  the  time  already  granted  had  come  to  an  end, 
but  without  ever  finding  that  he  was  able  to  produce 
the  required  answer.5’ 1 

Keluctance  to  grapple  with  doctrinal  or  philosoph¬ 
ical  questions  is  more  pronounced  among  practical 
workers  than  speculative  thinkers.  The  hard  worked 
bishop  or  pastor  of  a  flock  reconciles  himself  to  exile 
from  books  and  literary  activity  in  his  study  upon  the 
assumption  that  both  are  impossible,  and  that  of  the 
two  the  practical  activities  of  a  parish  or  a  diocese 
have  the  first  claim  upon  conscience  and  time.  The 
assumption  is  illusive.  Thought  enriches  the  fields  of 
practical  activities.  Communion  with  ideals  is  the 
natural  inspiration  to  hope  and  to  progress.  In  con¬ 
tributing  to  religious  thought,  no  matter  how  humble 
our  sphere,  we  are  discharging  a  high  and  hopeful 
duty  to  ourselves  and  to  the  field  of  our  work. 

Each  age  must  do  its  part  and  try  its  hand  upon 
the  old  problems.  Each  generation  with  deep  rever¬ 
ence  for  the  past  and  cherishing  with  gratitude  the 
results  already  accomplished,  must  remember  that  it 
has  its  own  work  to  do  and  its  own  gains  upon  the 


1  “  Philosophy  of  Theism,”  p.  2. 


16 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


talents  committed  to  it  in  its  inheritance,  to  contrib¬ 
ute  to  the  corporate  life  of  the  Church  in  the  present 
and  the  future. 

We  are  to  consider  some  of  the  relations  between 
reason  and  faith  in  Christian  belief  and  life.  Later 
in  the  winter,  by  the  kind  arrangement  of  the  Dean  of 
the  seminary,  I  hope  to  conclude  the  course  of  lec¬ 
tures  with  the  subject  of  authority  in  its  relations  to 
reason  and  faith  in  the  foundations  of  religious 
belief. 

The  Apostle  St.  Peter,  in  the  first  General  Epistle, 
charges  Christians  “  be  ready  always  to  give  an  answer 
to  every  man  that  asketh  you  a  reason  of  the  hope 
that  is  in  you,  with  meekness  and  fear.”  If  Christian 
hope  is  rational,  then  faith,  of  which  hope  is  the 
expression,  must  also  rest  upon  rational  foundations. 
In  the  New  Testament  hope  and  faith  are  convertible 
terms.  They  are  coincident  and  inseparable  in  Chris¬ 
tian  experience.  Hope  is  the  feeling  and  the  spon¬ 
taneous  activity  of  faith  in  the  revelations  of  the 
Gospel,  and  as  such  it  is  the  centre  of  the  Christian 
life- ^  A  reason  for  the  faith  is  given  to  those  who 
ask  for  it,  not  to  the  scoffer,  or  to  the  controversial 
bigot,  or  to  the  pride  of  intellectual  self-sufficiency, 
because  by  the  laws  of  the  mind  these  conditions  bar 
the  opening  to  receptivity  by  the  reason  of  all  moral 
and  spiritual  truth.  The  testimony  and  the  evidence 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


17 


of  the  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  light  which  it  brings 
with  it,  far  more  than  in  any  light  that  we  throw  upon 
it  by  our  own  intellectual  processes.  It  is  our  moral 
reason,  including  all  of  our  ethical  faculties  of  conscience 
and  duty  and  love  of  truth,  which  sees  the  truth  afar 
off  and  takes  cognizance  of  the  light  that  is  in  it.  It 
is  this  moral  reason  which  dominates  the  mere  logical 
and  dialectic  reason  and  which  determines  belief.  It 
is  St.  Paul’s  meaning  when  he  says,  “  For  with  the 
heart  man  believes  unto  righteousness.”  The  heart  as 
it  is  used  in  scripture,  is  not  the  mere  emotional 
nature,  but  the  whole  character,  the  personality,  the 
will,  the  feelings,  the  conscience  and  faith,  all  sup¬ 
ported  by  and  living  in  an  atmosphere  of  the  moral 
reason.1 

In  reading  the  writings  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  our 
English  scholars,  the  late  Dr.  Hort,  Bishop  Westcott’s 
lifelong  friend,  I  have  often  found  myself  pausing 
upon  passages  of  the  deepest  spiritual  import ;  and  the 
suggestion  occurred  to  me  that  if,  instead  of  confining 
himself  to  exegetical  scholarship,  he  had  given  some 
of  his  life  to  psychology  and  theology,  he  would  have 
enriched  our  English  thought  and  helped  in  the  great 
work  of  making  Christian  philosophy  luminous  to  the 
intellectual  confusions  of  our  age.  He  says  that  “  the 
truth  of  God  calls  not  for  the  separate  exercise  of  any 
one  faculty  ”  ;  “  that  no  element  of  our  compound  na- 

1  Delitzsch,  “  Biblical  Psychology,”  p.  292,  etc. 


18 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


ture  is  entirely  shut  out  from  taking  part  in  the  know¬ 
ledge  of  God.” 1 

These  and  many  other  aphoristic  expressions  are 
hints  and  prophecies  of  a  principle  which  is  destined  to 
a  wider  recognition  than  has  ever  been  accorded  to  it 
in  the  past.  The  appeal  of  Christianity  is  to  every 
moral  and  spiritual  faculty  of  our  nature.  Its  ac¬ 
ceptance  is  by  our  whole  personality,  and  the  concur¬ 
rent  activity  of  reason,  feeling,  faith  and  will  constitute 
belief. 

What  is  religion,  and  what  constitutes  religious  be¬ 
lief  and  saving  faith  ?  The  answers  to  this  are  as 
numerous  as  the  contending  systems  of  the  Philos¬ 
ophy  of  Religion.  We  have  the  Theology  of  Reason, 
the  Theology  of  Feeling,2  the  Theology  of  Faith,  the 
Theology  of  the  Will,  and  these  characterize  different 
types  of  religion  and  mould  the  instrumentalities  and 
methods  of  propagating  them. 

The  theology  of  dialectic  reason  holds  belief  in  God 
as  the  conclusion  of  a  demonstration.  An  acceptance 
of  Christianity  is  a  matter  of  evidence,  and  logic  is  the 
weapon  of  its  defense  and  propagation. 

The  eighteenth  century  abounded  in  books  on  Evi¬ 
dences,  and  our  forefathers  of  that  generation  seemed 
to  regard  Christianity  as  a  mathematical  proposition 
to  be  demonstrated  by  logical  proof.  Religion  de¬ 
clined  and  spiritual  life  in  the  Church  of  England  was 


1  Christian  Ecclesia. 


2  See  note  1. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


19 


at  the  lowest  ebb  in  its  history.  The  logical  process 
leaves  the  heart  cold  and  the  conscience  untouched 
and  the  wants  of  the  soul  unsatisfied. 

The  Theology  of  Feeling  takes  the  emotions  as  the 
criterion  of  religion  and  the  evidence  of  its  posses¬ 
sion.  We  cannot  doubt  that  feeling  is  a  vital  element 
in  religion  and  that  the  state  of  the  heart  and  the 
affections  before  God  is  the  criterion  of  its  reality. 
But  feeling  in  itself  is  only  subjective.  It  must  have 
an  object  which  moves  and  kindles  it,  and  what  that 
object  is  determines  its  religious  character.  Knowl¬ 
edge  of  God  is  the  fountain  of  the  love  of  God.  Faith 
and  feeling  must  have  reason  to  correct  their  aberra¬ 
tions  and  chasten  their  errors  and  guide  them  to  the 
truth.  As  single  faculties,  relied  upon  for  religion, 
they  have  been  disastrous  to  thousands  of  souls  who 
have  trusted  in  them. 

Again,  the  theology  of  the  will1  bids  us,  in  the 
name  of  religion,  to  an  act  of  choice  as  the  decisive 
question  of  the  soul  in  its  relations  to  God.  “  Choose 
to  believe,  will  to  believe,  and  you  are  already  saved.” 
This  is  the  favorite  appeal  of  the  fervent  evangelist  to 
the  doubting  and  the  undecided  who  are  without  the 
fold  of  the  Christian  Church  ;  but  the  troubled  hearer 
answers  “how  can  I  make  myself  believe?  If  that 
had  been  possible,  I  would  have  believed  long  ago.” 
Naked  will  is  powerless  except  for  blind  and  arbitrary 


1  See  note  2. 


20 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


action.  The  will  is  the  deciding  faculty,  but  depends 
upon  reasons  that  are  to  be  weighed  in  its  balance  and 
upon  feelings  of  desire  or  aversion  appealing  to  its 
choice ;  otherwise  it  is  suspended  in  the  air,  it  is  in  a 
state  of  motionless  equilibrium. 

We  are  told  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  to  every 
one  that  asketh.  The  asking  is  the  appeal  of  faith, 
feeling,  reason  and  the  will  for  knowledge.  The  con¬ 
sciousness  of  ignorance  is  based  upon  an  assumption 
of  reason  of  something  behind  the  veil  to  be  known, 
and  the  desire  to  know  contains  in  it  the  implicit  faith 
that  he  who  seeks  shall  find,  and  that  to  him  that 
knocks  it  shall  be  opened.1 

It  follows  from  these  considerations  that  our  defini¬ 
tion  of  reason  in  its  relation  to  other  faculties  and 
powers  of  the  mind,  must  embrace  a  conception  far 
transcending  that  single  form  of  its  activity  in  the 
construction  of  a  syllogism. 

The  clear  apprehension  of  this  principle  is  of  su¬ 
preme  importance  in  the  study  of  theology  and  phi¬ 
losophy.  We  speak  of  theology  and  philosophy  as 
separate  fields  of  thought,  but  from  a  higher  point  of 
view  theology  is  philosophical  and  philosophy  is  theo¬ 
logical.  They  may  be  separate  streams  in  a  world  of 
finite  confusions  and  antagonisms,  but  with  the  prog¬ 
ress  of  Christianity  they  seek  each  other  and  at  last 
are  destined  to  mingle  and  coalesce  in  the  unity  of 


1  See  note  1. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


21 


that  knowledge  of  Him  who  “  is  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life.” 

When  Kant  in  1781  published  the  ‘‘Critique  of 
Pure  Reason  ”  it  pained,  and  in  many  quarters,  dis¬ 
mayed  the  Christian  world  and  furnished  weapons 
which  skepticism  prematurely  adopted  as  fatal  to  re¬ 
ligious  belief.  The  pure  reason  was  the  logical  reason 
applied  to  unseen  and  spiritual  realities.  Kant  seemed 
to  demonstrate  its  insufficiency.  The  premises  were 
too  large  for  the  conclusions ;  they  assumed  too 
much  and  the  assumptions  cast  a  shadow  upon  the 
certainty  of  the  conclusions.  The  old  arguments 
for  the  existence  of  God,  the  cosmological,  the  on¬ 
tological,  the  teleological,  upon  which  philosophy 
and  natural  theology  had  depended,  were  inadequate ; 
they  left  a  doubt  in  the  region  of  the  premises.  Dia¬ 
lectic  reasoning  requires  certainty  in  the  premises, 
otherwise  the  conclusions  are  open  to  attack.  There¬ 
fore  mere  dialectic  reasoning  upon  these  questions  is 
destructive.  It  requires  the  help  of  a  larger  reason. 
It  needs  that  the  little  trembling  belief  it  creates  shall 
be  supplemented  from  other  reasoning  powers  and 
from  other  fields  of  evidence.  In  1788  Kant  published 
the  “  Critique  of  the  Practical  Keason,”  and  that  turns 
the  weight  of  his  great  authority  the  other  way. 
The  practical  reason,  when  it  goes  to  logic,  finds  its 
premises,  not  in  the  air,  not  in  the  infinities,  but  here 
upon  the  earth,  here  in  human  nature,  in  common 


22 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


sense  which  is  only  another  name  for  universal  sense ; 
in  conscience,  that  wonderful  judging  power  between 
right  and  wrong,  that  “  candle  of  the  Lord  ”  in  the 
soul  which,  however  dimly,  burns  wherever  man  has 
breathed  the  breath  of  life ;  in  duty  that  tells  me 
this  I  ought  to  do,  and  this  I  ought  not  to  do. 
What  can  duty  be  but  an  index  of  God  in  my  con¬ 
sciousness  ?  What  is  obligation  but  the  consciousness 
of  one  who  lays  it  upon  me  and  whom  I  am  bound  to 
obey  ?  Bevelation  meets  my  needs,  answers  all  the 
cries  of  my  spirit,  and  reason  tells  me  that  it  comes 
from  God  who  made  me  and  loves  me,  and  if  I  work 
with  Him,  He  will  work  with  me  and  in  me  to  do  of 
His  good  pleasure.  This  is  Kant’s  practical  reason. 
Many  writers  of  our  modern  thought  have  read  his 
“  Critique  of  Pure  Keason  ”  and  stopped  there.  Or  if 
they  have  read  the  other  they  have  never  cared  to  un¬ 
derstand  it,  and  so  they  call  reason  the  enemy  of  faith. 
The  reason  referred  to  in  St.  Peter’s  charge  is  an 
organ  of  mind  far  wider  than  the  derivative  faculty 
of  ratiocination.  The  mere  logical  faculty  which 
weaves  the  chain  connecting  premise  with  conclusion, 
while  it  enters  into  all  reasoning  as  in  a  sense  a  neces¬ 
sary  factor,  is  only  a  process  and  an  instrument  of  the 
reason,  a  scientific  formula  for  arriving  at  conclusions. 

Reason  itself  is  an  attribute  of  each  one  of  our 
faculties  as  thinking  and  feeling  beings.  It  is  the 
personality  of  the  mind  and  conditions  all  our  mental 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


23 


operations.  It  chastens  the  imagination ;  it  trains  the 
memory  which,  when  it  furnishes  reason  with  ma¬ 
terial  for  its  processes,  is  in  turn  dependent  upon 
reason  to  awaken  it  from  its  lapses,  to  correct  its 
aberrations  and  to  quicken  the  associations  by  which 
it  rescues  impressions  from  oblivion. 

The  will,  the  conscience,  the  feelings  have  in  them 
an  implicit  element  of  reason.  It  is  a  universal  faculty, 
so  that  if  called  upon  to  designate  the  distinguishing 
quality  of  man  we  would  call  him,  not  a  feeling, 
nor  a  thinking,  nor  an  acting,  but  a  reasonable  being. 
His  reason  is  always  at  work  implicitly  or  explicitly, 
consciously  or  unconsciously.  It  forms  his  judg¬ 
ments,  it  coordinates  the  testimony  and  unifies  the 
diversity  of  all  his  other  faculties.  In  the  great  ma¬ 
jority  of  mankind,  educated  and  uneducated,  it  is  a 
simple  act  of  the  mind.  It  goes  directly  from  cause 
to  effect,  from  antecedent  to  consequent  without  the 
intermediation  of  an  analysis  of  the  propositions 
which  form  the  premises  of  the  machinery  of  formal 
logic. 

There  are  comparatively  few  minds  that  have  the 
capacity  to  hold  before  them  a  number  of  facts  and 
inferences  and  arguments.  The  lawyers  with  the 
largest  experience  in  practice  tell  us  that  the  jury  or 
the  court  are  decided  by  some  one  fact  or  argument 
fastening  the  mind  by  an  instinct  of  the  reason  upon 
the  crucial  point  in  the  case,  and  consigning  the  sub- 


24 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


ordinate  issues  to  oblivion.  The  advocate,  who  has 
the  trained  instinct  of  reason  to  recognize  the  strong¬ 
est  point  in  his  case,  to  turn  the  light  upon  it  from 
every  point  of  view  and  ring  the  changes  until,  like  a 
theme  in  a  musical  composition,  it  runs  and  reappears 
and  winds  itself  through  all  the  variations,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  wins  his  cause  over  his  duller  adver¬ 
sary  who  wearies  and  gorges  the  mind  of  judge  and 
jury  with  multiplication  of  strong  and  weak  argu¬ 
ments  alike. 

The  common  sense  of  mankind  is  another  name  for 
this  universal  implicit  reason.  It  acts  as  it  were  un¬ 
consciously  and  with  spontaneity,  and  yet  it  is  con¬ 
sciously  based  upon  the  profoundest  postulates  of  fact 
and  of  truth.  To  this  common  sense,  independent  of 
a  knowledge  of  scientific  and  secondary  causes,  are 
due  those  judgments  by  which  we  are  guided  in  the 
practical  affairs  of  life.  Here  is  a  countryman  or  a 
sailor  whose  judgment  about  the  weather  is  verified 
in  the  majority  of  cases.  His  vocation  is  condi¬ 
tioned  by  the  exigencies  of  the  weather,  and  his 
powers  of  observation  and  memory  are  accumulat¬ 
ing  experience  from  the  aspects  of  cloud  and  sky, 
the  directions  of  wind,  his  own  bodily  sensations 
in  connection  with  the  approach  of  atmospheric  and 
meteorological  changes.  He  knows  nothing  of  the 
laws  of  wind  currents,  or  of  the  chemistry,  or  the 
mechanical  forces  concerned  in  precipitation.  But 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


25 


he  knows  a  law  that  is  deeper  and  wider  in  its 
sweep  than  all  of  these  immediate  causes.  By  his 
instinctive  reason  he  has  generalized  the  contents  of 
his  memory.  He  has  formed  a  conception  of  the 
Order  of  Nature  and  of  the  uniformity  of  her  laws. 
He  believes  that  what  has  happened  will  happen  again. 
He  recognizes  to-day  the  signs  of  changes  which  pre¬ 
ceded  changes  a  hundred  times  in  his  experience  of 
the  past.  His  instinctive  reason,  without  argument  or 
scientific  reasoning,  tells  him  that  the  change  is  immi¬ 
nent  in  the  present.  It  is  a  question  of  fact.  It  is 
direct  reasoning  from  observation  to  observation  with¬ 
out  the  intervention  of  logical  processes. 

In  a  far  higher  region  than  the  facts  of  physical 
phenomena  this  faculty  of  judgment  is  found  building 
foundations  upon  which  philosophy  and  religion  rear 
their  systems  of  thought.  The  transient  elements  in 
all  systems  of  philosophy  built  up  by  the  great  minds 
of  all  ages,  which  one  by  one  have  been  discredited 
and  have  passed  below  the  horizon  of  thought,  have 
demonstrated  the  futility  of  the  hope  of  finding  out 
God  by  abstract  thought  outside  of  the  primary  intu¬ 
itions  of  human  nature  and  outside  of  God’s  revela¬ 
tions. 

The  Scripture  says  “that  the  world  by  wisdom 
knew  not  God  ”  ;  “  that  no  flesh  should  glory  in  His 
presence.”  The  idea  is  that  the  very  effort  to  con¬ 
struct  a  knowledge  of  God  upon  the  plane  of  our  own 


26 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


wisdom  is  a  denial  of  our  relation  to  Him  as  the 
author  of  that  gift,  and  the  writer  of  that  evidence 
by  which,  in  the  construction  of  our  minds,  He  has 
made  known  His  personal  being,  His  intelligence  and 
His  will  in  our  own  nature  and  in  the  world  He  has 
made  for  our  home,  and  His  character  and  His  pur¬ 
poses  towards  us  in  His  revelations.  The  very  effort 
of  an  independent  knowledge  has  in  it  the  fatal  error 
and  sin  of  the  flesh  glorying  in  itself  before  God ;  re¬ 
sulting  in  the  separation  of  the  creature  from  the 
Creator,  of  the  finite  and  dependent  nature  from  the 
infinite  author  and  source  of  its  life. 

The  Duke  of  Argyle,  in  his  “  Philosophy  of  Belief,” 
has  this  simple  and  powerful  sentence,  “  The  human 
mind  looking  into  nature  sees  in  all  the  phenomena  of 
the  world  a  great  deal  that  is  obviously  of  its  own 
kind  and  quality.” 1  The  recognition  is  not  a  matter  of 
inference.  It  is  not  the  conclusion  of  a  logical  dem¬ 
onstration,  nor  on  the  other  hand  is  it  a  subjective 
notion  or  impression  which  are  as  variable  as  differ¬ 
ences  of  temperament  and  imagination,  but  it  is  a 
simple  and  pure  matter  of  fact,  a  direct  and  immediate 
cognizance  of  the  reason. 

The  difference  between  matter  and  mind  is  a  dis¬ 
tinction  so  obvious  and  direct  that  it  not  only  needs 
no  argument  to  prove  it  but  it  reappears,  like  a  rock 
through  the  mists  of  materialistic  speculations  as  an 

1  Argyle,  “Philosophy  of  Belief/ 1  p.  5. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


27 


object  of  direct  vision  by  the  instinctive  reason  of 
mankind.  So  the  existence  of  a  mind,  other  than  our 
own,  in  the  universe,  infinite  in  power  and  com¬ 
prehension  and  activity,  still  like  our  own  in  quality 
and  constitution,  assumes  the  position  of  a  fact 
identical,  in  the  realm  of  mind,  with  the  reality  of 

V 

the  visible  world  through  our  sense  of  sight.1  There 
are  questions  with  reference  to  this  mind,  its  char¬ 
acter,  its  mode  of  operation,  the  means  it  uses  for 
reaching  its  ends,  the  relations  it  sustains  to  the 
system  of  things  around  us  which  have  been  beset  by 
intellectual  difficulties  in  all  ages,  and  perhaps  ever 
will  be  beyond  complete  solution.  There  are  also 
moral  perplexities,  suggested  by  the  present  system  in 
which  we  find  ourselves,  which  the  highest  efforts  of 
reason  and  of  reasoning  cannot  explain,  and  which 
can  only  find  a  solution  in  a  revelation,  and  in  the 
faith  that  receives  it  and,  in  receiving  it,  transcends 
the  shadows  of  doubt  which  they  cast.  The  fact 
itself  of  the  existence  of  God  is  reached  not  at  the  end 
of  an  argument,  but  it  is  direct  vision  of  the  instinct¬ 
ive  reason,  and  as  such  it  is  one  of  the  foundations  of 
faith ;  it  is  a  perennial  spring  at  the  source  of  the 
origins  of  all  religions. 

Beside  these  primary  convictions  which  instinctive 
reason  clothes  with  the  reality  of  facts,  which  survive 
the  warring  of  words  and  the  clashings  of  systems 


1  See  note  3. 


28 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


of  thought,  there  are  reasons  for  faith  which  ap¬ 
proach  the  instinctive  in  simplicity  and  direct¬ 
ness  where,  although  we  are  conscious  of  the  act  of 
reasoning,  the  inferences  admit  of  no  shadow  of 
doubt. 

They  are  the  reasons  that  are  nearest  to  the  heart 
and  to  the  conscience,  and  therefore  the  most  power¬ 
ful  for  conviction.  As  we  lengthen  the  chain  and 
widen  the  area  of  induction  over  which  our  reasoning 
extends,  with  the  vast  majority  of  minds,  we  weaken 
the  force  of  the  conclusion. 

Newman  was  a  reasoner  of  rare  subtlety  and 
power.  He  speaks  from  his  own  perplexed  and 
troubled  mental  experiences  when  he  says,  “  Logicians 
are  more  bent  upon  concluding  rightly  than  on  right 
conclusions.  ...  To  most  men  multiplication  of 
argument  makes  the  point  in  hand  more  doubtful  and 
considerably  less  impressive.  Life  is  not  long  enough 
for  a  religion  of  inferences  ;  we  shall  never  have  done 
with  beginning  if  we  determine  always  to  begin  with 
proof.  .  .  .We  shall  ever  be  laying  our  founda¬ 

tions  ;  we  shall  turn  theology  into  evidences,  and 
divines  into  textuaries.  We  shall  never  get  at  our 
first  principles.  Eesolve  to  believe  nothing,  and  you 
must  prove  your  proofs  and  analyze  your  elements, 
sinking  farther  and  farther,  and  finding  in  the  lowest 
depth  a  lower  deep,  till  you  come  to  the  broad  bosom 
of  scepticism.’,  1  These  are  powerful  words.  They 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


29 


furnish  the  solution  of  the  causes  of  much  of  our 
modern  doubt  and  of  our  wild  philosophy.  It  is  the 
result  of  the  unreasonable  use  of  reason.  It  is  a 
perversion  of  the  highest  faculty  of  the  mind  into  an 
instrument  to  dissect  and  in  dissecting  to  kill  its  own 
life. 

It  is  a  violation  of  that  law  of  the  mind  which 
ordains  that  all  knowledge  must  begin  in  the  assump¬ 
tion  of  certain  ultimate  principles  and  facts,  and  these 
are  verified  by  the  results  in  the  buildings  we  erect 
upon  them. 

Conviction  is  the  combined  judgment  of  all  of  our 
faculties  in  believing  where  there  are  good  reasons 
for  believing.  Reason,  in  the  larger  sense,  is  the 
atmosphere  of  the  mind.  It  enables  us  to  grasp  the 
idea  of  cause  and  to  sound  its  mystery.  It  has  been 
called  the  ear  which  listens  and  interprets  the  voice 
of  conscience.  It  receives  the  ideas  of  duty,  of  justice 
and  of  religion  and  becomes  their  counsel  when  right 
and  wrong  are  contending  at  the  bar  of  the  will. 
Reason  is  implicit  in  faith,  and  therefore  the  con¬ 
ception  of  an  antagonism  between  them  involves  a 
contradiction.  To  depreciate  reason  in  order  to  exalt 
faith  is  to  despise  your  foundations  while  you  are 
glorifying  the  building  which  rests  upon  them.  The 
psychology  which  divides  the  attributes  of  the  mind 
from  one  another  is  only  a  tentative  imagination 

1  “Grammar  of  Assent, ”  J.  H.  Newman,  pp.  94,  95. 


30 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


summoned  for  the  purpose  of  mental  analysis.  When 
regarded  as  a  reality  it  is  the  most  fruitful  source  of 
error  and  confusion  in  philosophy.  The  practical 
reason  as  it  appears  in  consciousness  and  in  action  is 
an  attribute  of  mind  and  spirit  in  every  department 
of  human  nature.  In  illustrating  these  principles  we 
find  both  instinctive  and  conscious  reasoning  in  the 
beliefs  of  both  natural  and  revealed  religion. 

Consider  for  example  the  idea  of  a  revelation  from 
God,  its  probability,  its  possibility  which  are  denied 
by  a  large  class  of  materialistic  scientists.  Whence 
does  it  come?  Why  its  persistence  through  all  forms 
of  paganism  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  so  that  in 
view  of  the  final  and  full  revelation  of  God  in  Christ 
the  Hebrew  Prophet  exclaims  “  The  desire  of  all  na¬ 
tions  shall  come  !  ” 1  Had  reason  nothing  to  do  with 
that  universal  expectation,  that  unconquerable  hope  ? 

We  are  told  in  many  quarters  that  the  liberty  of 
God  to  fulfil  this  expectation  and  to  vouchsafe  a 
revelation  as  we  have  it  in  Christ,  is  limited  by  natural 
law,  and  that  the  uniformity  of  nature  forbids  the 
possibility  of  a  revelation  from  heaven  breaking 
through  this  closely  linked  network  of  cause  and 
effect,  of  antecedent  and  consequent. 

This  denial  proceeds  from  a  philosophy  calling  it¬ 
self  Agnosticism  from  its  cardinal  doctrine  that  God 
is  unknowable.  The  question  may  be  asked,  If  God 


1  Haggai  2  :  7. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


31 


is  unknowable  whence  comes  the  knowledge  of  Him 
involved  in  the  assertion  of  the  Agnostic  that  His 
power  to  reveal  Himself  to  man  is  limited  by  the  uni¬ 
formity  of  nature  ?  Suppose  I  have  before  me,  as  a 
judge,  a  question  of  the  relation  between  separate 
functions  of  a  government.  In  order  to  decide  that 
question  I  must  know  the  powers,  and  the  limitations 
upon  them  of  each  function,  and  that  involves  wide 
and  accurate  information.  Is  it  the  relation,  in  a  con¬ 
federation,  of  the  powers  of  the  State  governments  to 
the  Federal  government  ?  If  the  Federal  government 
is  a  mystery,  an  unknowable  quantity,  how  am  I  to 
ascertain  the  limitations  and  the  relations  sustained  to 
it  by  the  State  Government  ?  I  must  know  both 
parties  before  I  can  adjudicate  the  relations  between 
them.  A  philosopher  holds  that  God  is  unknowable 
and  yet  he  ventures  the  tremendous  assertion  that  the 
liberty  of  God  is  dominated  by  natural  law.  It 
would  seem  to  involve  a  profound  intimacy  with 
God’s  nature  and  God’s  powers  on  the  one  hand  and 
with  natural  law  on  the  other,  to  venture  the  asser¬ 
tion  that  the  liberty  of  the  one  is  limited  by  the  sup¬ 
posed  inexorable  uniformity  of  the  other.  Such  an 
assumption  of  a  knowledge  of  God  and  of  nature 
involves  claims  immeasurably  beyond  those  of  any 
system  of  speculation  ancient  or  modern.  And  yet  as 
we  have  seen  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  this  system  is 
that  God  is  unknowable. 


32 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


Suppose  we  turn,  with  Kant,  from  these  illogical 
confusions  to  the  practical  reason  of  mankind  upon 
the  question  of  a  revelation.  Think  of  the  first  man 
as  he  stood  alone,  face  to  face  with  nature.  The  old 
story  of  Genesis  with  its  majestic  simplicity  tells  us 
that  “  out  of  the  ground  the  Lord  God  formed  every 
beast  of  the  field  and  every  fowl  of  the  air ;  and 
brought  them  unto  Adam  to  see  what  he  would  call 
them.”  As  they  pass  before  his  wondering  eyes,  his 
curious  intelligence,  his  first  impression  would  be  that 
these  creatures,  through  unconscious  gestures  and 
movement  and  expression,  communed  with  one  an¬ 
other  ;  that  they  had,  so  to  speak,  a  common  language 
which  constituted  the  vehicle  of  communication.  And 
what  is  that  communication  between  living  beings 
but  the  essential  principle  of  revelation  ?  They  speak 
to  each  other.  Their  needs  are  ministered  by  one  to 
the  other.  It  is  the  law  of  their  life,  and  the  agent 
for  the  execution  of  that  law  is  inter-communication, 
revelation.  This  is  nature  in  the  highest  life  next  to 
man.  The  first  impression  made  upon  man  by  nature 
is  a  lesson  of  revelation.  Dr.  Morison  in  the  “  Foot¬ 
prints  of  the  Revealer  ”  says,  “  shall  there  be  eternal 
silence  between  God  and  man,  between  these  intelli- 
gencies,  these  kindred  natures  with  their  mutual  ca¬ 
pacity  for  love  and  communion  ?  Are  all  creatures  in 
the  universe  that  have  any  measure  of  intelligence  or 
are  even  sentient,  capable  of  telling  out  directly 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


33 


what  is  in  them,  and  have  they  the  means  and  the 
appetency  thereto  ?  Can  man  commune  with  man 
through  the  high  gift  of  language  ?  And  is  the  in¬ 
finite  mind  and  heart  not  to  express  itself,  or  is  it  to 
do  so  but  faintly  and  uncertainly  through  dumb 
material  symbols,  never  by  blessed  speech  ?  ” 1 

That  reasoning  would  be  as  spontaneous  and  as 
natural  to  the  primitive  man  as  it  is  to  us,  the  children 
of  the  light  of  God’s  highest  revelation  in  Christ. 

Another  idea  of  natural  religion  is  that  of  prayer. 
It  is  the  correlative  of  the  idea  of  revelation  and 
therefore  partakes  of  its  universality.  Is  prayer  a 
tradition  of  religion  planted  in  us  in  our  childhood, 
a  habit  formed,  the  tenacity  of  which  is  due  to  im¬ 
pressions  made  upon  the  plastic  mind  before  the  dawn 
of  conscious  thought,  under  the  law  that  earliest  im¬ 
pressions  are  the  last  to  fade  away  ?  Or  is  prayer  due 
to  a  mere  imagination  of  duty  ?  Or  again  is  it  a 
service  or  a  task,  as  though  it  were  enjoined  of 
Heaven,  which  if  punctually  rendered  would  bring 
down  the  reward  appointed  for  obedience  ?  Is  it  a 
matter  of  the  will,  with  no  meaning  for  the  reason 
and  no  impulse  from  the  heart  ?  Or  is  it  a  self-excita¬ 
tion  process  in  which  the  mind  is  making  a  conscious 
effort  to  kindle  the  thoughts  and  personate  the  desires 
of  devotion  ? 

All  of  these  elements  are  associated  with  prayer.  It 

1  Dr.  Morison,  11  Footprints  of  the  Revealer,”  p.  52. 


34 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


is  a  duty  to  ourselves  and  to  God.  It  is  a  service.  It 
is  a  habit  as  all  expressions  and  activities  of  our  nature 
organize  and  perpetuate  themselves  by  habits ;  and 
prayer  grows  by  praying.  But  these  cannot  be  the 
grounds  for  the  reasonable  faith  in  it.  The  moment 
we  permit  these  accompaniments  of  prayer  to  assume 
the  position  of  its  reality  and  its  substance  then  the 
peace  and  strength  of  it  wanes.  The  origin  of  prayer 
can  only  be  in  an  instinctive  reason  leading  us  to 
commune  with  God.  Conceive  of  what  we  would 
have  been  if  we  had  never  seen  a  human  face  or  heard 
a  human  voice.  Isolation  empties  human  nature  of  its 
contents.  We  are  made  for  sympathy,  for  inter¬ 
change  of  reason  with  reason,  of  thought  with 
thought,  of  heart  with  heart.  If  the  intercourse  with 
our  fellow-men  is  a  necessar}^  process  of  our  develop¬ 
ment,  then  instinctive  reasoning  leads  us  to  communion 
with  God  the  Father  of  our  spirits  as  the  natural  law 
of  our  spiritual  life.  Those  who  can  remember 
thirty  years  ago,  will  recall  the  sensation  in  the  cur¬ 
rent  literature  of  science  and  of  religion  produced  by 
a  scientific  test  of  prayer  proposed  to  the  world  by 
Professor  T3mdall.1  I  doubt  if  any  serious  man  of 
science  to-day  would  venture  his  reputation  upon  a 
similar  proposition.  The  fixity  of  natural  laws  is  no 
longer  an  argument,  even  in  the  world  of  science, 
against  the  natural  reason  and  revelation  of  prayer. 

1  See  Principal  Fairbairn,  1 1  Christ  in  the  Centuries,  ’  ’  p.  207,  etc. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


35 


Doubtless  there  are  thousands  in  Christian  lands 
who  have  abandoned  the  habit  of  prayer  learned  in 
their  childhood  and  in  the  worship  of  the  Christian 
churches.  To  those  who  are  preparing  for  the  min¬ 
istry  of  the  Christian  Church,  experience  testifies 
that  they  will  find  men  and  women  in  their  future 
congregations,  a  larger  number  than  they  imagine, 
who  are  strangers  to  prayer.  They  have  let  go  their 
faith  in  prayer.  The  simple  prayers  of  their  child¬ 
hood  are  as  the  memory  of  dreams.  If  they  should 
give  a  reason  for  the  abandonment  of  prayer  it  would 
probably  be  the  inverted  one,  that  they  had  ceased  to 
believe  that  God  heard  or  could  hear  them.  They 
have  mistaken  the  cause  for  the  effect.  They  give  up 
prayer  first  and  the  giving  it  up  brings  them  to  be¬ 
lieve  in  its  futility  and  unreality.  And  yet  no  heart 
that  has  retained  any  degree  of  its  freshness  and  feel¬ 
ing,  will  make  the  confession  that  prayer,  and  with 
it  the  thought  of  God,  has  dropped  out  of  life,  with¬ 
out  a  consciousness  of  loss  and  of  banishment  from  its 
natural  home. 

A  herever  scepticism  raises  its  head,  as  it  appears 
in  much  of  the  literature  of  our  generation  and  in  ex¬ 
tensive  sections  of  society,  we  find  the  shadow  of 
pessimism  as  its  invariable  attendant.  The  spectacle 
is  more  impressive  as  we  recognize  it  in  minds  of  lofty 
povers  and  of  naturally  optimistic  temperament. 
Goethe  was  a  genial  optimist,  but  back  of  it  lay  a 


36 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


deep  shadow  of  religious  doubt.  It  seems  to  lift  in 
some  degree  towards  the  end  of  his  life  as  he  came  to 
see  what  Christianity  really  was.  In  a  recorded 
conversation  he  says,  “  I  have  ever  been  esteemed  one 
of  fortune’s  favorites.  I  find  no  fault  with  my  life. 
Yet  truly  there  has  been  nothing  but  toil  and  care. 
It  has  been  the  perpetual  rolling  of  a  stone  that  I 
have  ever  had  to  raise  anew.”  Of  the  future  of  the 
world  he  says,  “Men  will  become  more  clever  and 
more  acute  but  not  better,  happier,  stronger  in  action. 
I  foresee  the  time  when  God  will  have  no  more  joy 
in  them  but  will  break  up  everything  for  a  renewed 
creation.”  1  Renan  was  naturally  of  a  hopeful  dispo¬ 
sition.  During  the  period  of  his  highest  intellectual 
activity  he  found  joy  and  diversion  in  the  exercise  of 
his  brilliant  literary  capacity,  but  the  pessimism  of  his 
unbelief  was  persistent.  Summing  up  the  contrast  be¬ 
tween  the  old  creed  of  Christianity  and  his  new  creed 
he  says,  “  Candidly  speaking,  I  fail  to  see  how  without 
the  ancient  dreams  the  foundations  of  a  happy,  noble 
life  can  ever  be  relaid.”  “We  are  living,”  he  says, 
“  on  the  perfume  of  an  empty  vase.” 2 

And  this  is  unbelief  at  its  best. 

The  rational  instincts  of  the  soul  are  ever  seeking, 
under  the  pressure  of  God’s  hand,  to  reassert  them¬ 
selves  against  a  false  philosophy,  and  the  gloom  and 

Quoted  by  Dr.  Orr  Kerr,  Lectures  from  “Conversations  of 
Goethe.  ” 

3  L’ Avenir  de  La  Science  (English  translation). 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


37 


confusion  of  scepticism  is  an  expression  of  that  an¬ 
tagonism.  Prayer  is  natural.  Given  the  existence  of 
God,  and  therefore  His  omnipresence,  what  can  be 
more  natural?  Must  we  say  that  God  is  everywhere 
and  yet  we  can  never  speak  to  Him?  That  God  is 
with  us  all  the  time  and  yet  between  us  and  Him 
there  must  be  eternal  silence?  We  cannot  conceive 
of  religion  without  Some  kind  of  prayer.  As  well 
conceive  of  music  without  an  atmosphere  to  throb  the 
waves  of  sound  to  our  ears.  As  well  conceive  of  light 
without  an  ether  to  bear  its  swift  vibrations  through 
the  infinities  of  space. 

If  it  be  true  that  these  great  convictions  of  natural 
religion  are  products  of  instinctive  and  conscious 
reason  supporting  faith,  is  there  valid  ground  for  sup¬ 
posing  that  the  facts  and  the  doctrines  of  Christianity, 
as  revealed  religion,  supernatural  in  their  origin,  would 
so  far  transcend  reason  as  to  dispense  with  its  sup¬ 
port  to  faith  and  render  faith  or  authority  the  sole 
organs  for  its  acceptance  and  appropriation?  Can 
it  be  that  there  is  this  cleft  between  what  we  call 
natural  religion  and  the  revelation  in  the  Bible  and 
in  Christ,  so  that  the  one  is  natural  and  the  other 
unnatural ;  the  one  reasonable  and  the  other  un¬ 
reasonable,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  removed  above  the 
domain  of  reason  ?  This  distinction  is  indeed  our  in¬ 
heritance  from  the  rationalistic  theologians  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  from  Romish  theology  of  the 


38 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


past.  But  there  are  hopeful  signs  that  we  are  advan¬ 
cing  beyond  this  conception,  and  that  theological 
thought  is  recognizing  the  contradiction  which  it 
involves. 

Is  this  distinction  a  tenable  one,  first  as  regards  the 
proposition  that  faith,  and  not  reason,  is  the  organ  for 
the  acceptance  of  revealed  religion  as  distinguished 
from  natural  religion  ?  In  the  discussion  so  far,  we 
have  tried  to  develop  the  fallacy,  in  the  assumption 
that  faith  and  reason  are  divisible,  so  that  they  can 
dwell  side  by  side  in  the  same  mind  asserting  princi¬ 
ples  which  are  contradictory.  That  would  be  to  con¬ 
ceive  of  the  mind  as  divided  against  itself.  We  have 
seen  also  that  it  is  the  confusion  of  a  false  psychology 
which  divides  our  minds  into  separate  faculties  with 
hard  and  fast  lines  of  division  between  them.  Keason 
is  implicit  in  faith  and  faith  furnishes  postulates  for 
reason.  If  this  be  so  the  idea  that  they  are  antago¬ 
nistic  is  a  contradiction.  Again  the  supposition  that 
authority,  either  in  a  Church  or  in  historic  verity,  is 
the  sole  organ  for  the  acceptance  of  revealed  re¬ 
ligion,  upon  the  ground  that  it  is  independent  of 
reason,  is  an  unthinkable  one.  Authority  must  have 
rational  grounds  in  order  to  teach  authoritatively. 
The  contents  of  a  revelation  may  transcend  reason  so 
that  reasonable  faith  must  supplement  it.  But  reason 
must  be  the  judge  of  the  credentials  of  a  revelation. 
Reason  must  at  least  examine  the  vehicle  through 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


39 


which  the  revelation  conies,  while  the  moral  reason 
and  faith  together  are  concerned  in  the  acceptance  of 
its  contents.  Authority  therefore  must  appeal  to 
reason,  that  is,  it  must  prove  its  own  claims.  It  is  im¬ 
possible  to  conceive  of  authority  as  denying  the  rights 
of  reason,  for,  in  appealing  to  reason  for  its  support, 
it  disowns  its  right  to  teach  irrationally.  To  call 
upon  reason  to  prove  its  own  incompetency  in 
favor  of  authority,  that  is  to  refute  itself,  is  an 
elaboration  of  contradictory  thought,  or  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum. 

Again,  the  distinction  referred  to  between  natural 
and  revealed  religion  involves  an  illusion  in  the  con¬ 
ception  of  revelation.  The  opening  verse  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  has  this  far  reaching  state¬ 
ment  of  the  meaning  of  revelation,  “  God,  who  at 
sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners  spake  in  time 
past  unto  the  fathers  by  the  prophets,  hath  in  these 
last  days  spoken  unto  us  by  His  Son,  whom  He  hath 
appointed  heir  of  all  things,  by  whom  also  He  made 
the  worlds.5’1  St.  Paul’s  epistle  to  the  Homans  has 
also  this  remarkable  definition  of  God’s  revelation  to 
the  heathen  and  of  the  germs  of  truth,  in  heathen  re¬ 
ligions,  corrupted  and  overlaid  by  unrighteousness. 
“For  the  wrath  of  God  is  revealed  from  heaven 
against  all  ungodliness  and  unrighteousness  of  men 
who  hold  the  truth  in  unrighteousness;  because  that 


1  Hebrews  1 :  1,  2. 


40 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


which  may  be  known  of  God  is  manifest  in  them; 
for  God  hath  showed  it  unto  them.  For  the  invisible 
things  of  Him  from  the  creation  of  the  world,  are 
clearly  seen,  being  understood  by  the  things  that  are 
made,  even  His  eternal  power  and  Godhead ;  so  that 
they  are  without  excuse.” 1 

From  these  statements  it  seems  clear  that  the  in¬ 
spired  conception  of  revelation  extends  beyond  the 
Bible  and  beyond  the  revelation  in  Jesus  Christ.  It 
covers  the  whole  area  of  natural  religion,  so  that  the 
distinction  between  Christianity  and  all  other  religions 
is  not  that  the  one  is  a  revelation  from  God,  and  that 
the  other  is  the  natural  product  of  the  human  mind 
in  its  search  after  God.  The  germs  of  truth  in  all 
religions  are  revelations  from  God.  Their  supersti¬ 
tions  and  degradations  are  the  human  corruptions  of 
these  revelations.  The  recognition  of  this  principle 
furnishes  an  element  of  hope  and  a  guide  to  intelli¬ 
gent  methods  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  world. 
Through  the  progress  of  intercommunication,  the  ex¬ 
pansion  of  Christian  civilization,  the  study  of  the 
languages,  the  religions,  and  the  ethnology  of  all  the 
races  of  men,  we  to-day  know  the  world  as  no  other 
generation  ever  dreamed  of  as  a  possibility.  That 
knowledge  has  reinforced  the  missionary  hope  of 
Christianity,  and  has  enabled  us  to  see  what  the  in¬ 
spiration  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  living  con- 

1  Romans  1  : 18,  19,  20. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


41 


viction  of  the  New  realized  thousands  of  years  ago. 
The  Spirit  of  God  has  never  ceased  to  strive  with 
man.  The  truth  of  God,  even  in  the  corruptions  of 
paganism,  has  always  been  a  light  in  a  dark  place, 
waiting  for  the  dawn  and  the  day-star  to  arise  upon 
the  hearts  of  men. 

It  may  seem  to  some  a  derogation  of  the  divine  and 
supernatural  origin  of  Christianity,  to  connect  it  with 
the  false  religions  of  the  world  by  the  recognition  of 
truths  that  are  common  to  both.  But  the  Bible  does 
this. 

St.  Paul,  in  his  appeal  to  Greek  paganism  and  phi¬ 
losophy,  pointing  to  the  beautiful  idols  which  adorned 
Areopagus,  where  he  stood,  exclaims,  “  I  perceive  that 
in  all  things  ye  are  given  to  religious  worship,  for  as  I 
passed  by  and  beheld  your  devotions,  I  found  an  altar 
with  this  inscription  ‘  To  the  Unknown  God.’  Whom 
therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship,  Him  declare  I  unto 
you.” 1 

If  Christianity,  as  its  inspired  apostles  taught,  ac¬ 
knowledged  sympathies  with  the  spiritual  intelligence 
which,  though  overlaid  with  superstitions,  it  recog¬ 
nized  in  false  religions ;  if  it  beheld  what  has  been 
called  “  the  unconscious  prophecies  of  heathendom,” 2 
in  the  very  forms  of  idolatry  which  were  destined  to 
extinction  by  the  light  of  the  truth  which  it  revealed, 
then  the  distinction  between  it  and  all  other  revelations 

1  Acts  17  :  22,  23.  3  Hulsean  Lectures,  Archbp.  Trench. 


42 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


would  be  that  of  the  difference  between  the  dim  and 
tentative  life  of  the  plant  and  the  wonderful  organ¬ 
ism  of  the  tree  ;  between  the  flower  and  the  fruit,  be¬ 
tween  the  dawn  and  the  noonday.  As  the  dawn  can 
no  longer  exist,  but  is  swept  away  when  the  sun  rises, 
as  the  bloom  has  gone  when  the  fruit  appears,  so 
natural  religion  is  superseded  by  revealed  religion. 
It  is  the  old  that  can  no  longer  exist  by  the  new. 
There  is  not  a  doctrine  of  natural  religion  that  is  not 
transformed  and  transmuted  and  lifted  out  of  the 
darkness  of  error  into  the  light  of  a  reasonable  faith 
by  the  revelation  in  Christianity.1 

The  application  of  this  principle  to  the  facts  and 
doctrines  of  Christianity  is  the  characteristic  of  this 
generation  beyond  any  that  have  preceded  it.  To 
rescue  the  statements  of  its  doctrines  from  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  metaphysical  and  theological  enigmas,  to 
clothe  the  bones  with  the  flesh  of  living  and  speaking 
truth,  to  lead  men  and  women  and  children  away  from 
the  paralyzing  conviction  that  the  gospel  is  in  its 
essence  an  incomprehensible  mystery,  this  is  surely 
the  highest,  the  most  hopeful  aim  of  the  Christian 
teacher  and  thinker.  It  is  an  illusion  to  suppose  that 
the  effort  to  find  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  us  is 
born  of  that  spirit  which  has  been  the  bane  of  philos¬ 
ophy,  the  undue  exaltation  of  reason  and  the  cultiva¬ 
tion  of  intellectual  pride  inimical  to  faith.  It  is  in- 


1  See  note  4. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


43 


deed  consistent  with  the  truest  humility,  but  not  with 
that  spurious  imitation  of  it  which  hides  the  talent  of 
our  reason  in  the  earth.  It  is  well  to  study  and  to 
learn  the  limits  of  our  thought,  and  to  check  the  spirit 
of  self-sufficiency  which,  as  with  all  of  our  faculties, 
may  assert  itself  in  connection  with  our  reason,  but  in 
order  to  do  that  it  is  not  necessary  that  we  should 
banish  reason  and  put  ignorance  and  presumption  in 
its  place.  We  are  a  mystery  to  ourselves  but  as  far 
as  it  goes  our  knowledge  of  ourselves  is  more  real 
than  any  other.  We  know  our  fellow-man,  it  is  true 
imperfectly,  but  that  knowledge  is  the  practical  basis 
of  human  society  and  of  our  social  life  as  God  has 
ordained  it.  We  cannot  find  out  the  Almighty  to 
perfection,  but  because  our  knowledge  of  Him  cannot 
be  exhaustive  it  does  not  follow  that  we  can  never 
know  Him  at  all.  He  “  hath  given  us  an  understand¬ 
ing  that  we  may  know  Him  that  is  true,”1  and  that 
knowledge,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  the  most  precious  of 
realities  and  carries  with  it  the  profoundest  missionary 
impulse  to  impart  it  to  others. 

These  considerations,  wrhich  we  have  passed  in 
review  to  establish  the  relation  of  reason  to  the 
truths  of  Revelation  and  to  our  spiritual  faculties, 
would  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  world  under 
the  light  of  Christianity  would  progressively  develop 
the  spirit  of  more  openness  to  reason,  more  im- 


1 1  John  5 :  20. 


44 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


patience  with  unreasoning  ignorance.  And  we  find 
that  it  is  so.  Men  are  less  willing  to  believe 
because  they  are  told  to  believe.  The  conception  is 
surely  growing  that  true  authority  must  have  rea¬ 
sons  for  the  faith  which  secures  submission  and  obedi¬ 
ence. 

It  is  simply  a  confusion  of  psychology,  in  the 
definition  of  reason  limiting  it  to  the  dialectic 
faculty,  which  raises  the  apprehension  that  we  are 
subordinating  faith  and  authority  to  man’s  finite 
reason.  We  have  tried  to  illustrate  in  all  that  has 
been  said  that  the  moral  reason  which  is  implicit  in 
faith,  in  conscience,  and  in  the  will  of  obedience,  is 
the  receptive  faculty  for  religion.  It  is  the  internal 
verifier  of  the  objective  knowledge  that  comes  to  us 
in  revelation.  It  is  receptive,  not  creative  in  the 
sense  that  it  can  supersede  an  objective  revelation  of 
truth.  I  may  receive  and  believe  the  facts  of  the 
Gospel  on  authority,  and  authority  must  always  be  an 
immense  power  over  belief,  but  belief  on  authority 
alone  may  lie  on  the  surface  of  my  nature  unappro¬ 
priated  by  my  spiritual  intelligence,  and  un welcomed 
and  unmeaning  to  my  heart.  The  belief  of  my  moral 
and  spiritual  reason  must  appropriate  them,  and  find 
yearnings  in  my  heart  and  in  my  spiritual  intelligence 
which  respond  to  the  reasons  in  the  truth.  The  mind 
that  receives  the  Gospel  must  have  something  in  it  akin 
to  the  mind  that  communicates  it.  I  could  never  have 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


45 


written  the  poetry  of  Shakespeare  or  Tennyson,  or 
indeed  poetry  at  all.  But  it  must  be  that  the  poetic 
instinct  is  in  me,  otherwise  my  heart  would  he  dumb 
and  my  ear  deaf  to  the  poet’s  song.  The  thoughts  of 
great  minds  reach  us  and  thrill  us  because  we  are  akin 
to  them.  They  incarnate  in  words  the  ideas  that  lay 
in  our  minds  in  the  penumbra  of  our  thought, 
imagined  but  never  seen  in  living  form  before.  They 
speak  our  inarticulate  thoughts  and  feelings,  and 
introduce  them  to  us  as  the  children  of  our  minds,  and 
we  welcome  them  as  our  own.  The  secret  of  the 
power  by  which  they  move  our  deepest  sympathies  is 
that  they  interpret  us  to  ourselves.  They  speak  to 
our  reason,  and  reason  recognizes  their  voice  as  its 
own  voice,  their  thought  as  its  own  thought. 

Thus  our  capacity  to  understand  thought  extends 
indefinitely  beyond  our  power  to  produce  it.  When  I 
apprehend  a  truth  revealed  to  me  by  another,  or  by  a 
revelation  from  God,  it  does  not  follow  that  I  could 
ever  by  any  effort  of  my  own,  have  reasoned  that 
truth  out  for  myself,  any  more  than  I  could  have 
written  the  poem  or  produced  the  musical  com¬ 
position  of  the  great  artist,  which  moves  my  heart  to 
its  depths.  My  faculty  for  verifying  truth  is  almost 
infinitely  beyond  my  narrow  faculty  for  discovering 
truth  for  myself. 

The  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  union  of 
the  divine  and  human  in  my  Lord  and  Saviour ;  what 


46 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


a  tremendous  ascent  of  mind,  what  an  illimitable 
view  of  imagination  an  almost  infinite  grasp  of  rea¬ 
son  would  it  have  required  to  have  originated  a 
truth  so  marvelous,  a  conception  so  apparently  im¬ 
possible.  And  yet,  when  it  comes  from  God,  it  has 
in  it  a  tone  of  naturalness  as  of  a  voice  from  a  far  off 
home.  Natural  religion  and  reason  tell  me  of  God  as 
the  first  cause  and  the  moral  ruler  and  creator  of  the 
world,  but  they  do  not  tell  me  what  I  am,  and  the 
meaning  of  my  pain,  my  sin,  my  death,  my  destiny. 

The  magnitudes  of  matter  stultify  my  faith  that 
God  is  my  father.  There  must  be  some  quantity 
commensurate  with  these  magnitudes,  to  reveal  to  me 
the  worth  of  my  soul  in  God’s  eyes,  in  contrast  to 
the  apparent  infinity  of  matter,  before  my  faith  can 
stand. 

The  poet  looking  at  human  life  and  at  the  order  of 
Nature  for  the  attributes  of  God,  says  : 


“  Conjecture  of  the  worker  by  the  work; 

Is  there  strength  there  ? — enough  !  Intelligence  ? 
Ample :  but  goodness  in  a  like  degree  ? 

Not  to  the  human  eye  in  the  present  state, 

An  isoscele  deficient  in  the  base. 

What  lacks,  then,  of  perfection  fit  for  God, 

But  just  the  instance  which  this  tale  supplies, 

Of  love  without  a  limit  ?  So  is  strength, 

So  is  intelligence  ;  let  love  be  so, 

Unlimited  in  its  self-sacrifice, 

Then  is  the  tale  true,  and  God  shows  complete.”  1 


1  Robert  Browning. 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


47 


The  incarnation  is  a  reason  and  an  answer  to  the 
greatest  adversary  to  faith.  It  is  wonderful,  but 
intensely  natural. 

Is  God  the  contriver  of  the  world  who  views  it  afar 
off,  the  first  cause,  the  Governor  of  the  world  ? 
Christianity  knows  no  such  God  as  that.  Its  cardinal 
conception  of  God  is  the  unity  of  God  with  man. 
Do  we  suffer  ?  fie  too  suffered  for  us.  Do  we  bear 
pain,  the  innocent  for  the  guilty  ?  He  suffered  for 
the  guilty,  and  in  Him  was  no  sin.  Is  the  world  to 
the  great  majority  a  hard  world  in  the  lot  of  life  ? 
“  He  was  rich,  but  for  our  sakes  became  poor,  that  we 
through  His  poverty  might  be  rich.” 

These  answers  in  the  Gospel  to  our  ethical  needs 
and  our  human  cries  are  better  than  many  expla¬ 
nations.  The  theoretical  explanations  are  constantly 
changing,  but  these  ethical  needs  to  which  Christ  and 
Christ  alone  supplies  an  answer,  are  always  there  in 
human  nature  and  will  be  until  pain  and  sorrow  and 
sin  and  death  are  swallowed  up  in  victory.  They  are 
the  practical  but  ever  original  reasons  for  faith  which 
always  reach  the  human  heart.  On  a  great  battle¬ 
field,  a  friend  with  his  arm  around  a  dying  soldier,  a 
young  officer,  hears  the  whispered  words,  “  He  tasted 
death  for  every  man.”  “I  am  thankful  you  are  a 
Christian,”  said  his  friend.  “Yes,”  he  replies,  “I 
have  tried  to  be,  I  know  He  feels  for  me.  He  suf¬ 
fered  this,  and  I  am  safe  with  Him.” 


48 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


We  are  familiar  through  Canon  Gore  with  the  story 
of  Romanes.  His  spiritual  history  appears  in  the 
“  Life  and  Letters,”  by  his  wrife  in  1895.  He  was  re¬ 
garded  by  Professor  Huxley  as  one  of  the  ablest 
scientific  minds  of  the  last  century.  He  renounced 
religious  belief,  and  passed  through  years  of  scientific 
doubt  back  to  the  simplest  Christian  faith,  in  which 
he  died.  In  his  struggles  to  believe  he  would  continu¬ 
ally  ask  himself,  “  Faith  is  so  beautiful  it  must  mean 
something !  Why  is  the  Gospel  story  so  natural  ? 
Why  can  we  find  no  flaw  in  Jesus  Christ  ?  Were  not 
His  words  after  all  the  words  of  truth,  telling  the 
mind  of  God  infinitely  more  surely  than  any  reading 
of  nature?  And  the  final  tragedy  of  the  Cross, 
would  it  not,  if  once  believed,  solve  that  obstinate 
mystery  of  pain  and  failure  and  show  finally  how  God 
can  love  and  still  let  us  suffer  ?  To  have  faith  in  this 
reason  for  Christ  would  solve  the  great  contradiction, 
the  great  trial.”  He  prayed  for  this  faith  and  it  came 
to  him  at  last  and  never  left  him.  To  you,  who  are 
equipping  yourselves  for  the  ministry  of  reconciliation, 
may  I  emphasize  this  reason  for  faith  in  Christ  as  the 
best  way  to  the  human  heart. 

In  closing  I  must  remind  you  of  the  relation  of 
reason  to  your  personal  experience.  My  inner  relig¬ 
ious  life,  its  experiences,  its  feelings,  its  deepest  con¬ 
victions,  cannot  be  formulated  into  words  or  argu¬ 
ments  to  establish  your  faith.  If  I  could  express 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


49 


them  they  might  be  strange  to  your  experience,  for 
feelings  are  as  variable  as  temperament  or  associ¬ 
ations.  Wesley,  in  his  later  years,  seems  to  have  had 
some  doubts  about  “  Experience  Meetings  ”  as  a  means 
for  promoting  and  deepening  spiritual  life,  and  en¬ 
deavored  to  confine  them  to  an  exchange  of  sympa¬ 
thies  in  its  duties  and  its  daily  habits.  The  expres¬ 
sions  of  devotional  feeling  in  the  secret  life  of  the 
soul  that  abound  in  the  literature  of  mysticism  of  the 
Christian  ages,  have  doubtless  touched  and  quickened 
Christian  life  to  deeper  feeling  and  a  closer  walk  with 
God  ;  but  there  are  many  to  whom  even  the  “  Imita¬ 
tion  of  Christ”  has  in  it  an  element  of  morbidness, 
an  atmosphere  of  unreality,  an  undefinable  influence 
of  discouragement. 

I  can  give  my  reasons  for  believing  in  God,  for  my 
faith  in  Christ  from  every  field  of  knowledge,  from 
every  source  of  evidence  addressed  to  thinking  beings. 
But  behind  and  deeper  than  these  exoteric  reasons, 
there  are  esoteric  convictions  which  are  untranslatable 
into  words.  The  sources  are  too  secret  and  the  reali¬ 
ties  are  too  spiritual,  too  subtle,  too  sacred  to  tell. 
Prayers  answered  when  you  prayed  with  so  little 
faith ;  providences  that  once  thwarted  your  will  and 
disappointed  your  hopes,  now  seen  as  mercy  and  good¬ 
ness  over  your  life ;  sorrows  that  chastened  you ; 
warnings  from  God  that  made  you  beware ;  consola¬ 
tions  after  failures ;  mornings  of  joy  after  nights  of 


50 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


weeping  ;  memories  of  saints  of  God  who  loved  you ; 
a  book  that  opened  glimpses  of  spiritual  insight ;  a 
word  from  a  preacher  that  touched  your  heart,  these 
are  all  pages  of  your  history  that  the  years  of  your 
experience  have  written,  and  in  them  and  through 
them  there  comes,  not  a  conclusion  from  evidence,  but 
a  knowledge  that  you  know  as  no  one  else  knows  of 
you.  “  That  you  have  never  been  alone,  that  God  has 
been  about  your  path  all  the  way,”  is  an  intuition  of 
faith,  which  is  itself  the  highest  reason  and  the  deep¬ 
est  feeling  of  our  spiritual  nature. 

There  is  another  reason  for  faith  which  in  some 
respects  partakes  of  the  nature  of  this  secret  experi¬ 
ence  of  the  soul  in  the  history  of  God’s  dealing  with 
us  and  His  providence  over  our  life.  Our  theologies 
cannot  explain  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  The 
Church  has  most  wisely  withheld  from  any  attempt 
at  a  definition  or  a  dogmatic  statement  of  the  inspira¬ 
tion  of  scripture.  In  its  essence  the  apprehension  of 
it  is  a  secret  experience  of  the  soul.  Ho  criticism,  no 
Biblical  studies,  no  dogmatic  or  authoritative  defini¬ 
tion  can  create  the  belief.  They  may  defend  it ;  they 
may  educate  ignorance  or  clear  up  misapprehensions 
with  reference  to  the  vehicle  of  words  through  which 
it  is  expressed  ;  but  they  cannot  impart  it.  It  is  the 
secret  of  the  Lord  in  the  heart.  Its  full  realization 
requires  a  personal  verification.  This  is  the  reason, 
and  can  be  the  only  reason,  for  the  universal  adapta- 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


51 


tion  of  scripture.  We  speak  of  the  universality  of  the 
poet  as  the  measure  of  his  greatness  ;  but  the  spiritual 
power  of  the  Bible  over  the  "whole  area  of  human 
life,  as  demonstrated  in  our  age,  "when  it  has  been 
translated  into  every  known  tongue  and  has  reached 
the  mind  of  every  people,  is  itself  the  most  wonderful 
revelation  of  its  unity  and  the  unity  of  the  human 
race. 

The  Bible  is  primarily  addressed  to  the  people  of  its 
own  time ;  and  its  diversity  of  form  corresponds  with 
the  variations  of  the  local  and  temporary  elements  of 
the  ages  and  the  authors  through  whom  it  was  com¬ 
municated  to  the  world.  But  the  miracle  of  litera¬ 
ture  is  the  transcendence  of  its  spiritual  power  over 
the  human  elements  which  constitute  the  vehicle  of  its 
expression,  so  that  its  consolations  and  its  warnings, 
its  revelations  of  sin  and  God’s  righteousness,  and  its 
insight  into  the  secret  places  of  man’s  heart  are  as 
vivid  and  as  startling  to-day  as  they  wrere  two  or 
three  thousand  years  ago.  It  speaks  to  the  spiritual 
intelligence  of  the  ignorant  with  the  same  quickening 
power  as  to  that  of  the  scholar  with  his  apparatus  of 
exegesis  and  learning. 

The  reasons  for  faith  as  we  have  seen,  are  drawn 
from  every  field  of  thought  and  of  evidence,  and  the 
correspondence  of  the  testimony  from  the  variety 
of  sources,  is  itself  the  most  powerful  evidence 
for  the  conviction  of  the  reason.  With  the  advance 


52 


REASON  AND  FAITH 


of  education  all  truth  will  doubtless  be,  with  in¬ 
creasing  clearness  of  apprehension,  tributary  to  the 
central  truth  of  man’s  destiny  and  salvation  as 
made  known  in  the  revelation  of  Christianity.  The 
churches  and  all  bodies  of  Christians  are  demanding 
wider  education  for  the  Christian  ministry  ;  but  those 
who  constitute  the  working  energy  and  the  steadfast 
faith  in  all  of  our  congregations,  are  realizing  more 
than  ever  the  need,  in  preaching  and  in  ministration, 
for  that  power  which  is  born  of  living  convictions 
based  upon  personal  experience  of  the  Living  God, 
and  the  spiritual  intelligence  in  the  ministry  to  appre¬ 
hend  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the  Bible,  and  to  apply 
its  lessons  to  the  spiritual  wants  of  human  nature. 
In  the  equipment  for  the  ministry  of  the  Gospel  these 
are  indispensable  qualifications  for  reaching  the  con¬ 
science  and  the  hearts  of  the  people. 


FAITH  AND  KEASON 


LECTURE  II 


FAITH  AND  REASON 

Faith,  the  vision  of  the  unseen.  The  illusion  that  science  deals  ex¬ 
clusively  with  the  material  and  the  visible.  The  foundation  of 
science.  The  faith  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  faith  of  the  New 
Testament.  Dr.  Wace  on  faith.  Mozley’s  conception  of  faith  as 
unverified  reason.  Illustrations  from  character,  from  science  and 
from  religion.  Faith  as  comprehensive  name  for  the  contents  of 
Christianity.  Antagonisms  to  faith  in  the  present  generation. 
The  nescience  philosophy.  Utterance  of  Professor  Huxley. 
Foundations  of  Agnosticism  laid  by  Christian  thinkers,  Hamilton 
and  Hansel.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  relies  upon  them  for  his 
philosophy.  Association  of  Agnosticism  with  science  among  the 
masses.  Effects  upon  literature,  upon  social  life  and  morality. 
Influence  upon  Christian  thought.  “  Back  to  Christ,”  away  from 
creeds.  The  sermon  on  the  mount  the  sum  of  the  gospel. 
Doctrines  and  ethics  of  Christianity  stand  or  fall  together. 
Moral  code  of  Christianity  powerless  without  divine  authority  of 
Christ.  Duty  inspired  by  faith.  The  inspiration  of  missions  to 
the  heathen.  Duty  to  Christ  the  spirit  of  martyrdom  in  the  early 
Church.  Remarkable  utterance  of  George  Eliot.  Analysis. 
Error  of  reliance  upon  imagination  for  apprehension  of  spiritual 
truth.  Conscious  and  unconscious  faith.  Faith  implicit  in  duty. 
Utterances  of  Christ. 

In  the  first  lecture  we  endeavored  to  illustrate 

some  of  the  functions  of  reason  as  accounting  for  the 

origins  of  the  great  ideas  of  natural  religion,  and  in  a 

higher  sense  the  support  and  the  cooperative  faculty 

with  faith  in  the  fundamental  ideas  of  Christianity. 

The  requirement  of  the  New  Testament  to  give  a 

55 


56 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  ns  is  not  a  specific  one, 
confined  to  the  first  age  of  Christianity,  when  it  had 
to  meet  the  questionings  and  doubts,  the  traditions 
and  authorities  of  paganism,  but  it  is  in  force  for  all 
generations  of  the  Christian  Church,  as  long  as  the 
truth  has  to  fight  its  way  in  the  world. 

Thought  can  only  be  met  by  thought,  and  false 
reasons  can  only  be  refuted  by  true  reasons.  The 
Christian  Church  has  never  refused  the  challenge 
of  an  appeal  to  the  reasonableness  of  human  nature 
and  she  never  will.  She  has  in  her  heart  the  abiding 
consciousness  that,  however  rational  her  adversaries 
may  seem  to  be,  she  has  in  her  faith  reasons  that 
will  find  a  response  in  the  universal  reason  of 
mankind,  as  a  true  solution  of  the  mysteries  of  man’s 
life  and  the  problems  of  the  universe  in  which  he  is 
placed. 

The  Scripture  phrase,  “a  reason  for  the  faith,” 
suggests  the  idea  that  reason  and  faith,  so  far  from 
being  separate  or  antagonistic  religious  faculties,  are 
cooperative  and  correlative.  Reason  as  implicit  in 
faith,  is  reason  working  unconsciously  and  without 
criticism  of  its  own  operations. 

There  is  an  expression,  in  a  remarkable  chapter  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  illustrating  the  relation 
of  faith  to  reason  which  is  to  be  our  subject  in  this 
lecture.  “  Through  faith  we  understand  that  the 
worlds  were  framed  by  the  Word  of  God,  so  that 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


57 


things  which  are  seen  were  not  made  of  things  which 
do  appear.” 1  As  reason  in  the  first  passage  is  de¬ 
scribed  as  implicit  in  faith,  so  faith  here  is  defined  as 
working  in  and  through  the  reason,  and  laying  hold 
of  the  spiritual  and  the  unseen  as  the  origin  and  the 
cause  of  the  temporal  and  the  visible  world. 

A  cause  must  be  apprehended  by  the  reason,  but 
the  vision  of  the  unseen  as  a  postulate  for  reason  is 
an  apprehension  of  faith.  This  is  the  invariable 
assumption  in  all  Scripture  expressions  which  de¬ 
scribe  faith  in  its  different  relations  and  forms  of 
activity. 

It  is  a  vision  of  the  unseen.  It  lays  hold  upon  and 
uses  the  unseen  as  a  practical  power  over  the  spiritual 
and  the  intellectual  life,  in  contradistinction  to  the 
seen  which  ever  tends  to  dominate  the  mind  as  the 
only  objective  reality. 

Science  is  supposed  to  deal  only  with  the  outward 
and  material  substance  of  things ;  that  which  we  can 
see  with  our  eyes  and  touch  with  our  hands,  and 
therefore  the  popular  idea  is  that  the  things  of  science 
are  certainties :  they  are  the  subjects  of  ocular  and 
sensible  demonstration.  But  if  we  think,  at  once  we 
recognize  this  as  a  vulgar  illusion.  If  observation 
confined  itself  to  the  visible  and  the  tangible  it  could 
never  develop  into  science.  Animals  observe  and  see 
the  visible  world  with  wider  vision  and  more  accurate 


1  Hebrews  11  :  3. 


58 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


cognizance  of  sense  than  man,  but  the  animal  is 
incapable  of  science.  It  has  certain  gifts  that  are 
furnished  for  its  preservation,  by  which  it  generalizes 
the  contents  of  its  experiences  from  observation  of 
the  phenomena  of  the  world  in  which  it  lives,  but 
there  is  an  immeasurable  gulf  between  that  instinctive 
knowledge  and  the  habits  which  are  formed  by  it, 
and  science  as  man  knows  it. 

Physical  science  deals  with  the  physical,  only  as  a 
symbol  and  an  index  of  the  metaphysical  which  is  the 
true  object  of  its  search.  It  is  seeking  to  know  the 
qualities  and  the  relations  of  the  substances  which  it 
analyzes.  Its  ultimate  quest  is  a  knowledge  of  the 
forces  that  are  at  work  and  that  account  for  the 
phenomena.  These  forces,  relations,  qualities,  at¬ 
tractions  and  repulsions  are  recognized  by  their 
effects,  but  they  themselves  are  invisible.  They  dwell 
in  a  world  which  is  to  you  unseen,  as  truly  as  the 
world  of  spirit  is  unseen.  Your  reason  infers  them  as 
the  cause,  and  your  faith  lays  hold  on  them  as  the 
reality.  This  is  the  only  possible  account  you  can 
give  of  them,  and  this  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
science.  Its  ultimate  foundation  is  faith  in  the  un¬ 
seen.  You  are  capable  of  science  because  as  a  being 
of  intelligence  and  of  spirit,  you  have  the  gift  of  faith 
to  see  the  unseen  and  to  build  all  of  your  knowledge 
upon  the  assumption  of  its  reality. 

This  is  the  general  principle  and  the  philosophy  of 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


59 


faith,  and  it  finds  its  highest  expression  in  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  the  Scriptures.  The  faith  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  is  described  as  “  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible,” 1 
and  the  faith  of  the  Hew  Testament  as  “  whom  hav¬ 
ing  not  seen  ye  love.”  2 

In  this  relation  it  is  the  instinct  and  the  dominant 
force  in  all  religions.  In  the  Old  Testament  revela¬ 
tion  it  is  the  principle  underlying  the  history,  the 
wonderful  literature  and  the  religious  institutions  of 
the  chosen  people  of  God.  Their  spiritual  life  re¬ 
volved  around  their  faith  in  an  eternal  law  of  right¬ 
eousness  and  a  personal  God  as  its  author.  It  had  in 
it  the  promises  to  their  forefathers  of  a  future  for 
their  race,  in  themselves  vague  and  improbable  and 
opposed  to  present  indications  in  the  visible  aspect  of 
things,  and  yet  certain,  because  their  God  was  a  God 
of  truth.  These  promises  were  few,  and  to  other 
races,  who  had  no  living  belief  in  a  personal  God, 
they  were  fragile  imaginations  and  incredible  dreams. 
But  the  Jewish  faith,  in  its  ideal  expressions  in 
prophecy  and  Psalm,  was  that  these  promises  of  their 
invisible  but  covenant  God  were  more  reliable  than 
visible  nature  and  its  order,  than  sea,  and  sun,  and 
summer,  and  winter.  Their  historic  faith  kindled 
their  imaginations  to  picture  the  scenes  of  their  won¬ 
derful  history.  God  had  sweetened  the  springs  of 
Marah  for  their  thirst  in  the  desert ;  had  struck  the 


1  Hebrews  11 :  27. 


2 1  Peter  1 : 8. 


60 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


waters  from  the  rock  to  flow  in  the  wilderness.  To 
them,  the  idea  of  the  impossibility  of  a  miracle,  or 
that  their  invisible  God,  who  made  the  visible  order 
and  assigned  to  the  forces  of  nature  the  work  they 
were  to  do,  could  not,  for  His  own  purposes,  use 
them  and  accomplish  His  will  through  them  would 
have  been  intellectual  insanity.  Though  flesh  and 
heart  failed  them,  though  the  mountains  were 
carried  into  the  depths  of  the  sea,  they  felt  “  the 
Lord  of  Hosts  is  with  us ;  the  God  of  Jacob  is  our 
refuge.” 1 

The  foundations  of  Christianity  were  laid  in  this 
preparatory  faith  for  which  the  elder  dispensation 
was  the  education.  The  advance  in  the  faith  in  the 
invisible  God  was  the  manifestation  of  that  God  in 
Christ  Jesus,  His  humanity,  His  divinity,  His  life, 
His  death  for  sin,  His  resurrection  as  the  ground  for 
faith  in  the  unseen  realities.  Christ  had  gone  back 
into  the  invisible  world,  but  the  Christians  believed 
that  He  was  there  in  a  nature  like  their  own  both 
God  and  man ;  that  He  was  in  constant  communion 
with  them  and  they  with  Him.  This  was  the  tre¬ 
mendous  addition  to  the  foundations  of  their  faith 
and  to  its  vital  forces  as  a  power  of  salvation. 

The  activity  of  the  faith  faculty  occupies  the  same 
position  in  all  religions  for  good  or  for  evil.  In  the 
life  and  conduct  of  mankind  there  has  been  no  power 


1  Ps.  46  :  7. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


61 


like  faith.  Human  nature  is  made  for  it,  and  its 
absence  can  only  be  conceived  of  as  a  paralysis  of 
man’s  mind  on  the  whole  side  of  his  spiritual  and  in¬ 
tellectual  constitution.  One  of  our  best  thinkers  says, 
“  It  has  been  by  the  invisible  rather  than  by  the 
visible,  by  the  future  rather  than  by  the  present,  by 
faith  rather  than  by  sight  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  man¬ 
kind  as  a  whole  has  been  governed  and  organized  and 
has  advanced  to  its  present  position.  The  part  played 
by  reason  has  indeed  been  a  momentous  one  and  has 
been  second  only  to  that  of  faith.  It  is  faith  that  has 
grasped  whole  nations  and  ages  under  its  sway,  and 
which  has  determined  the  main  principles  of  their 
conduct  and  their  destiny.”  1 

The  Scriptures  illustrate  faith  by  giving  us  a  picture 
of  it  in  action  and  in  life.  Writers  and  thinkers  have 
attempted  to  define  it  as  an  experience  in  conscious¬ 
ness.  Canon  Mozley  in  describing  one  aspect  of  it 
says,  “  Faith  is  unverified  reason  ;  reason  which  has 
not  yet  received  the  verification  of  the  final  test,  but 
is  still  expectant.” 2  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  there 
is  a  side  of  truth  in  this  statement  of  one  aspect  of 
faith.  It  is  reason,  looking  onward  for  the  verifica¬ 
tion  of  a  conclusion  that  it  has  reached,  leaning  upon 
and  supported  by  faith.  Without  this  faith,  reason  is 
impotent  for  belief  or  for  action. 

I  may  have  a  strong  argument  for  some  reform  in 
1  Dr.  Wace,  B.  L.,  p.  9,  A.  Ed.  2  Mozley,  B.  L.,  1865,  p.  104. 


62 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Church  or  state  which  I  am  advocating,  but  I  may  not 
have  faith,  that  is,  practical  confidence  in  my  own  argu¬ 
ment.  This  constitutes  the  difference  between  a  leader 
and  a  follower,  between  a  theoretical  and  a  practical 
reformer,  between  Luther  and  Erasmus,  between  a 
philosopher  who  sits  in  his  study  and  weaves  his  log¬ 
ical  chains  until  he  is  as  confident  about  shadows  as 
he  is  about  realities,  and  one  who  sees  the  truth  and 
stands  for  it  though  he  may  have  to  stand  alone. 
There  are  thousands  of  men  whose  theories  are  right 
but  they  seem  powerless  for  action.  They  say  and  do 
not.  They  need  faith  in  themselves  and  in  the  truth 
they  profess  to  believe.  They  lack  that  trust  in  duty 
and  truth  which  alone  can  arouse  human  nature  from 
the  enervation  of  selfishness  and  send  it  out  to  work 
for  men  and  for  God.  Eight  conclusions  are  of  great 
importance  in  the  fields  of  our  duty  to  ourselves  and 
to  the  world,  but  reason  can  only  lead  us  up  to  a  con¬ 
clusion;  faith  alone  can  follow  on.  Faith  alone  can 
deepen  it  into  conviction,  and  apply  it  to  life,  and  link 
it  with  that  hope  that  maketh  not  ashamed,  and  that 
love  which  transforms  all  sacrifice  into  the  joy  of 
service  for  God  and  for  man. 

In  the  sphere  of  the  natural  life  it  is  a  principle  of  the 
mind  which  is  the  secret  of  endurance  and  patient  ex¬ 
pectation  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  The  man  of 
science  toils  through  the  patient  years  seeing  the  truth 
he  is  searching  for,  not  by  sight,  but  by  a  scientific  faith. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


63 


All  the  lines  of  scientific  reasoning  and  experiment 
are  pointing  towards  the  truth,  but  it  is  still  in  the 
dark;  it  still  awaits  a  crowning  verification,  like  the 
discovery  of  Neptune  from  observations  of  perturba¬ 
tions  of  the  orbit  of  Uranus.  The  two  great  astrono¬ 
mers,  for  long  years  of  weary  nights  searching  the 
sky  in  vain,  at  last,  their  calculations  eliminated  from 
error  by  repeated  experiments,  fixed  upon  a  spot 
in  the  illimitable  space  where  the  new  world  must  be. 
With  trembling  hope  they  pointed  the  telescope,  and 
the  great  planet  moved  into  its  field  to  greet  their 
wondering  eyes.  We  call  that  a  triumph  of  science 
and  so  it  is.  But  from  the  beginning  to  the  consum¬ 
mation  it  was  the  patience,  the  perseverance,  the  toil, 
the  hope  of  faith  that  won  the  victory.  In  the 
higher  realm  of  religion  that  same  principle  of  faith 
is,  we  are  told,  “  the  victory  that  overcometh  the 
world.” 1 

Faith  again  is  used  as  the  comprehensive  name  for 
the  beliefs  that  constitute  the  substance  and  the  heart 
of  Christianity,  its  intellectual  contents  and  deeper 
still,  its  living  convictions ;  that  of  which  the  Church 
of  all  ages  is  the  witness  and  of  which  the  Bible  com¬ 
mitted  to  it  is  the  revelation. 

To  say  that  Christian  faith  in  our  day  and  genera¬ 
tion  is  engaged  in  conflicts  with  potential  enemies  is 
only  to  assert  the  identity  of  the  experience  of  the 


1  1  John  5 :  4. 


64 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


present  with  the  history  of  the  past.  The  vividness 
and  the  stress  of  the  present  tend  to  exaggeration  of 
its  conflicts  and  its  evils  in  contrast  with  the  fading 
memories  and  the  receding  shadows  of  the  past.  The 
politician  and  the  churchman,  the  social  reformer  and 
the  satirist  are  prone  to  intensified  impressions  of  the 
good  or  the  evil  in  their  own  generation.  It  is 
natural  and  human  that  it  should  be  so  and  on  one 
side  it  is  a  beneficent  and  needful  provision,  but  still 
liable  to  illusion,  and  no  illusion  is  as  good  as  the  truth 
that  dissipates  it.  On  the  other  hand  the  optimist 
may  think,  as  some  writers  about  religion  and  relig¬ 
ious  experience  are  saying,  that  the  doubts  which  con¬ 
fronted  faith  in  the  past  are  for  the  most  part  dead 
doubts ;  that  the  problems  that  engaged  the  mind  of 
the  past  have  ceased  to  trouble  the  present  so  that  old 
controversies  in  creeds  and  in  philosophy,  in  society 
and  the  state  are  for  the  most  part  like  the  ashes  and 
the  scorice  of  extinct  volcanoes ;  but  doubts  are  never 
dead,  and  old  controversies  are  never  burnt  out. 
Christianity  has  passed  through  many  conflicts,  and 
sterner  ones  may  await  her  in  the  future,  but  her 
strength  is  cumulative  and  as  her  day  so  shall  it  be. 

Each  generation  has  in  it  an  element  of  originality, 
because  humanity  is  a  progressive  organism  and  under 
Christianity  is  ever  pressing  forward  towards  the  real¬ 
ization  of  its  ideal,  temporal  and  eternal,  in  Christ. 

The  present  generation  is  confronted  by  problems 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


65 


and  influences  that  are  certainly  exceptional  in  the 
history  of  religion,  at  least  as  regards  the  degree  and 
the  intensity  of  their  activity.  The  wonderful  prog¬ 
ress  of  scientific  discoveries  has  given  rise  to  an  ex¬ 
citement  in  the  minds  of  the  masses  unknown  before 
upon  any  subject  which  has  engaged  the  attention  of 
mankind.  Science  has  thus  been  advertised  ;  it  has 
been  brought  to  our  doors  and  enters  into  the  com¬ 
monest  processes  of  our  daily  life.  All  men  see  its 
triumphs  and  wonder  at  them.  Should  it  be  a  matter 
of  surprise  that  with  this  material  efficiency  and  cer¬ 
tainty  of  practical  results,  the  idea  should  grow  and 
spread  that  the  principle  and  method  of  scientific 
investigation  is  the  only  method  by  which  truth  can 
be  arrived  at  and  mysteries  unveiled,  and  that  outside 
of  these  methods  all  else  is  uncertain  and  lacking  in 
verification  ? 

Christianity  says  “  Faith  is  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen.” 1  Science, 
in  the  hands  of  this  modern  school  of  sceptical  phi¬ 
losophy,  says,  “We  can  have  no  possible  assurance  of 
things  that  are  only  hoped  for,  no  evidence  whatever 
of  things  not  seen.  We  can  have  no  knowledge  and 
therefore  no  real  convictions  of  things  that  are  in¬ 
capable  of  being  tested  and  verified  by  the  senses. 
Every  step  we  take  in  the  path  of  knowledge  demands 
verification.  We  are  bound  to  walk  by  sight,  and 


1  Hebrews  11  :  1. 


66 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


walking  by  faith  is  thus  relegated  to  the  region  of 
unreality  and  superstition.  In  so  far  as  Christianity 
is  without  this  verification  it  has  no  adequate  ground 
to  stand  upon.”  This  is  the  method  and  the  first 
principle  which  in  the  popular  mind  is  identified 
with  science,  and  such  identification  has  spread  it  far 
and  wide. 

This  theory  necessarily  lands  us  in  pure  material¬ 
ism  ;  accordingly  we  find  those  who  hold  it  engaged 
in  the  effort  to  discover  the  mechanical  equivalent 
of  thought,  the  physical  forces  in  the  mechanism 
of  human  life  which  constitute  the  cause  of 
psychical  phenomena.  The  popular  and  eloquent 
exponent  of  this  philosophy  who  has  lately  died, 
says  in  one  of  his  lectures,  “  I  can  find  no  intelligi¬ 
ble  ground  for  refusing  to  say  that  the  properties  of 
protoplasm,  including  thought,  reason,  will  and 
what  appear  to  us  to  be  spiritual  operations,  re¬ 
sult  from  the  nature  and  the  disposition  of  its 
molecules.”1  He  does  not  say  that  movement 
among  the  molecules  of  nerve  matter  in  the  brain 
are  antecedents  and  attendants  upon  the  produc¬ 
tion  of  thought,  but  that  they  are  the  causes  of 
thought ;  they  are  the  phenomena  of  that  highest 
power  of  matter  which  is  displayed  in  its  functions  as 
the  creator  of  mind. 

The  more  cautious  advocates  of  the  philosophy  of 
1  Huxley,  Collected  Essays,  pub.  1894. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


67 


materialism,  recognizing  the  contradictions  and  the 
impossibilities  involved  in  this  extreme  but  logical 
development  of  the  theory,  have  taken  refuge  in  the 
philosophy  of  nescience,  and  prefer  to  be  called  ag¬ 
nostics.1  Nescience  does  not  deny  the  existence  of 
God  nor  the  existence  of  a  spirit  in  man,  but  simply 
says  if  these  things  are  so  we  cannot  know  them  be¬ 
cause  there  is  no  scientific  proof  of  them.  We  have 
no  means  of  verifying  them  to  our  senses.  God  is  un¬ 
knowable,  and  therefore  even  upon  the  assumption  of 
the  possibility  of  a  revelation  it  is  impossible  that  we 
could  receive  it,  because  the  finite  cannot  receive  or 
apprehend  the  infinite.  It  is  a  remarkable  episode  in 
the  history  of  philosophy  that  the  foundation  of  this 
agnostic  thought  was  unconsciously  laid  by  Christian 
thinkers.  Materialistic  conceptions  of  the  origin  of 
the  universe,  including  mind,  are  indeed  as  old  as  Lu¬ 
cretius.  Nescience,  as  a  fear  and  a  temptation  to  the 
human  mind,  is  older  still.  But  this  organized  system 
of  negations  is  of  modern  origin.  Sir  William  Hamil¬ 
ton  was  coeval  with  the  revival  of  philosophy  in  Brit¬ 
ish  thought  and  education,  after  a  long  period  of 
decadence.  Ilis  doctrine  of  the  Belativity  of  Knowl¬ 
edge  might  be  described  in  this  simple  form.  We 
know  nothing  of  anything  as  it  is  in  itself.  All  that 
we  know  is  only  as  appearance  of  something  that  is 
unknown.  Therefore  being  ignorant  of  things  in 


1  See  note  6. 


68 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


themselves  we  are  limited  to  the  contemplation  of 
appearances. 

With  reference  to  the  knowledge  of  God  his  posi¬ 
tion  was  that  the  finite  could  not  know  the  infinite, 
and  yet  that  the  existence  of  the  infinite  is  a  necessary 
datum  of  the  human  consciousness.  From  the  first  of 
these  propositions  a  consequence,  which  Hamilton 
never  intended,  is  logically  inevitable,  for  if  wTe  can 
know  nothing  but  the  appearances  of  things  and  have 
no  faculty  for  the  cognizance  of  realities,  we  cannot 
be  said  to  know  anything,  for  knowledge  is  reality 
and  not  an  appearance.  With  reference  to  the  second 
proposition,  that  we  cannot  know  God  and  yet  we  are 
conscious  of  His  existence,  it  may  be  replied  that  if 
we  are  conscious  of  God’s  existence  we  must  know 
God  as  far  as  we  are  so  conscious,  and  that  conscious¬ 
ness  becomes  the  receptivity  and  the  promise  of  all 
other  knowledge  of  Him.  Dean  Mansel  applied  the 
doctrine  to  theology  in  “  The  Limits  of  Beligious 
Thought,”  Bampton  Lectures  for  1858  and  presses  it 
to  the  verge  of  the  nescience  philosophy. 

Mansel  and  his  master,  Hamilton,  used  the  doctrine 
to  establish  the  proof  of  the  necessity  of  a  revelation. 
Spencer,  upon  the  basis  of  the  nescience  philosophy, 
uses  it  to  prove  the  impossibility  of  a  revelation,  be¬ 
cause  between  the  finite  and  the  infinite  there  is  an 
impassable  gulf,  so  that  not  even  a  revelation  from 
heaven  can  introduce  into  the  finite  mind  a  knowledge 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


69 


which,  without  ceasing  to  be  finite,  it  cannot  attain. 
“Thought  by  its  very  nature  is  imprisoned  in  the 
relative.” 

This  doctrine,  in  part  of  the  Hamiltonian  and  in  full 
of  the  Spencerian  philosophy,  of  “  impassable  gulfs  ” 
between  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  the  relative  and 
the  absolute,  the  conditioned  and  the  unconditioned 
seems  to  be  nothing  more  than  a  false  abstraction,  a 
metaphysical  figment,  a  fictitious  entity,  an  imaginary 
hard  and  fast  line  of  division  between  God  and  man 
wTiich  the  mind  of  the  philosopher  conjures  up,  and 
then  charges  intelligence  vrith  imbecility,  because  of 
its  inability  to  think  nonsense.  In  all  religion,  as  has 
been  shown  by  every  sound  Christian  thinker,  there 
is  an  element  of  mystery,  but  a  religion  which  is  all 
mystery  is  an  impossibility  and  an  absurdity. 

The  fundamental  doctrine  of  nescience,  which  finds 
its  ablest  exposition  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  is  a  blank  denial  of  the  possibility  of  either 
faith  or  reason  attaining  to  any  knowledge  of  God  in 
natural  or  in  revealed  religion.  It  is  an  easy  off-hand 
philosophy  and  fascinating  by  reason  of  its  simplicity 
on  the  surface.  The  plain  mind  loves  a  demon¬ 
stration  and  demonstrative  evidence.  That  it  has 
made  a  wide  impression  in  many  quarters  upon  our 
generation  no  one  who  thinks  or  observes  or  reads 
will  deny. 

In  one  of  the  latest  scientific  books  from  the 


70 


FAITII  AND  REASON 


American  press  upon  the  subject  of  The  Evolution  of 
Government,  the  author  addresses  himself  to  prove  the 
proposition  that  the  time  is  near  at  hand  when  the 
state  will  not  only  live,  but  prosper  more  and  more  as 
religion  is  progressively  eliminated. 

Much  of  the  ethical  writing  that  is  circulated  among 
the  masses,  embodied  in  fiction  to  reach  the  young, 
and  literary  creations  of  a  more  permanent  character 
to  reach  a  maturer  class  of  minds,  has  for  its  theme 
the  idea  that  right  can  better  prevail  and  law  can 
govern  without  God,  and  without  conscience  deriving 
its  sanction  from  a  belief  in  a  personal  God. 

In  addition  to  these  expressions  through  literature, 
writers  have,  from  observation  and  statistics,  pointed 
out  signs  in  the  Old  World  and  in  our  ISTew  World  of 
a  relaxation  of  the  bonds  of  morality ;  a  lowering  of 
the  tone  of  public  conscience  ;  an  increase  of  license ; 
the  frequency  of  suicide  in  the  great  cities  of  Europe 
and  America,  and  the  absence  of  that  reprobation  of 
it  upon  the  conception  of  it  as  a  crime  against  God  as 
well  as  against  man,  which  was  characteristic  of  a 
former  generation  ;  the  breaking  down  of  the  de¬ 
fenses  which  Christian  conscience  and  law  have 
thrown  around  domestic  purity  in  the  multiplication 
of  causes  for  divorce ;  the  absence  of  restraint  and 
the  yielding  to  impulse  and  passion;  these  and  other 
darker  symptoms  of  the  most  civilized  societies  have 
been  referred  to  the  prevalence  of  a  negation  phi- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


71 


losophy,  in  the  name  of  science,  which  flouts  at  mo¬ 
rality  and  blots  out  duty  and  God  and  immortality. 
There  may  be  exaggeration 1  as  to  the  prevalence  of 
this  philosophy  and  the  extent  of  these  symptoms,  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  wide  activity  of  these 
influences  and  of  their  direct  antagonism  to  Christian 
faith. 

There  are  also  influences  in  the  Church  itself  giving 
evidence  of  the  presence  of  this  negation  philosophy, 
and  accounting  for  tendencies  in  recent  forms  of 
theological  thought.  There  is  a  school  of  thought, 
composed  of  many  good  men,  whose  watchword  is 
“  back  to  Christ  ”  and  “  away  from  creeds.”  Back  to 
the  Gospel  morality  and  away  from  the  wranglings 
of  theology.  The  tendency  of  the  school  is  to  let  go 
miracles,  to  subordinate  the  supernatural  in  the  per¬ 
son  of  Christ  and  in  the  wonderful  facts  of  the  Gos¬ 
pel  ;  to  relegate  to  the  background,  as  far  as  possible, 
everything  mysterious  and  incapable  of  verification ; 
to  exalt  the  moral  precepts  of  the  Gospel  and  the 
moral  ideal  of  Christ,  as  though  they  could  stand  by 
themselves  as  the  sum  of  Christianity.  They  say  we 
need  not  perplex  ourselves  about  His  divinity  or  the 
atonement  for  our  sins  upon  the  cross  or  His  literal 
resurrection  from  the  dead  as  containing  in  it  the 
premise  and  the  potency  of  our  own  immortal  destiny 
in  Him.  Let  these  mysteries  alone.  Preach  Christ 


1  See  note  5. 


72 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


as  the  moral  ideal  of  the  race.  Seek  to  be  like  Him. 
Strive  to  engraft  His  laws  of  conduct  upon  men,  upon 
society,  upon  law  and  art,  upon  business,  government 
and  civilization.  Morality,  not  doctrine,  is  the  saving 
power  of  the  world. 

Those  who  hold  this  view  imagine  that  they  are 
maintaining  the  simplicity  of  the  Gospel.  As  great  as 
Dean  Stanley  was  in  those  departments  of  religious 
thought,  where  his  genius  was  at  home,  he  had  vague 
suspicions  of  doctrines  and  of  creeds  as  unneces¬ 
sary  burdens  upon  reason  and  faith.  Dr.  Hatch,  of 
Oxford,  whose  early  death  deprived  English  scholar¬ 
ship  of  one  of  its  brightest  ornaments,  opens  his 
celebrated  Hibbert  Lectures  with  these  words :  “  It 
is  impossible  for  any  one,  whether  he  be  a  student 
of  history  or  no,  to  fail  to  notice  a  difference  of 
both  form  and  content  between  the  ‘Sermon  on  the 
Mount,’  and  the  Nicene  Creed.  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  the  promulgation  of  a  new  law  of  conduct ; 
it  assumes  beliefs  rather  than  formulates  them ;  the 
theological  conceptions  that  underlie  it  belong  to  the 
ethical  rather  than  to  the  speculative  side  of  theology ; 
metaphysics  are  wholly  absent.  The  Hicene  Creed  is 
a  statement  partly  of  historical  facts  and  partly  of 
dogmatic  inferences ;  the  metaphysical  terms  which  it 
contains  would  probably  have  been  unintelligible  to 
the  first  disciples ;  ethics  have  no  place  in  it.  The 
one  belongs  to  a  world  of  Syrian  peasants ;  the  other 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


73 


to  a  world  of  Greek  philosophers.  The  contrast  is 
patent.  If  any  one  thinks  that  it  is  sufficiently 
explained  by  saying  that  the  one  is  a  sermon  and  the 
other  a  creed,  it  must  be  pointed  out  in  reply  that  the 
question  why  an  ethical  sermon  stood  in  the  fore¬ 
front  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  and  a  meta¬ 
physical  creed  in  the  forefront  of  the  Christianity 
of  the  fourth  century,  is  a  problem  which  claims  in¬ 
vestigation.”  1 

o 

The  dominance  of  the  idea,  that  dogma  and 
doctrine  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Gospel  and  are 
only  gratuitous  additions  and  accretions  which  are 
destined  to  pass  away,  and  that  the  essential  thing  in 
Christianity  is  the  new  code  of  morals  set  forth 
authoritatively  by  Jesus  Christ,  is  quite  evident  in  this 
passage.  It  appears  at  the  opening  of  the  book,  as 
the  prominent  thought  in  writing  it,  and  it  reappears 
at  the  end,  in  a  more  overt  form,  as  a  conclusion  from 
all  the  lines  of  thought  and  investigation  which  the 
author  has  pursued.  He  says  “  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  not  an  outlying  portion  of  the  Gospel  but  its 

9 

sum.  “ 

It  appears  from  many  expressions  that,  at  least  one 
of  the  influences,  leading  a  mind  of  extraordinary 
capacity  to  such  a  conclusion,  was  the  conviction  of  a 
supposed  advantage  in  such  a  position  for  defending 
Christianity  from  the  attack  of  a  philosophy  which 

1  Dr.  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  1.  9  Ibid,  p.  351. 


74 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


denied  the  possibility  of  a  miraculous  revelation,  by 
confining  the  statement  of  its  essentials  to  the  smallest 
possible  dimensions,  and  to  eliminate  from  its  con¬ 
tents  all  that  is  mysterious  and  perplexing  so  that  it 
may  be  able  to  challenge  the  scientific  tests  for  veri¬ 
fication.  If  we  conceive  of  Christianity  as,  in  its 
essence,  only  an  ethical  sermon,  we  remove  the 
grounds  of  objections  and  satisfy  the  demands  of  the 
scientific  evidence.  The  conscience  of  mankind  verifies 
the  testimony.  There  you  have  a  ground  that  cannot 
be  shaken.  The  ethical  sermon  is  the  real  Gospel  and 
the  Nicene  Creed  is  a  form  of  dogma  invented  by  the 
Church,  from  which  the  reality  of  Christianity  has 
evaporated,  leaving  behind  it  intellectual  dreams  and 
arid  metaphysical  distinctions.  Such  is  the  com¬ 
placent  criticism  of  a  school  of  thought  upon  a  creed 
that  embodies  a  noble  history  of  tribulations  and 
triumphs  of  the  faith  and  the  reason  of  the  Christian 
Church  standing  through  centuries  of  conflict  for  the 
essential  Divinity  and  essential  humanity  of  her  Lord 
and  Master. 

The  Divinity  of  our  Lord  is  the  only  possible 
explanation  of  His  words  and  His  assumptions  of 
power,  and  the  Hicene  Creed  finds  its  authority  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  old  law  says,  “  Thou 
shalt  not  kill,”  .  .  .  “  but  I  say  unto  you  whoso¬ 

ever  is  angry  with  his  brother  without  a  cause  shall  be 
in  danger  of  the  judgment.”  The  old  law  proclaims, 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


75 


“Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery.  But  I  say  unto 
you,  that  whosoever  looketh  on  a  woman  to  lust  after 
her  hath  committed  adultery  with  her  already  in  his 
heart.”  Who  is  it  speaking  to  those  Jews,  who  super¬ 
sedes  and  transcends  the  law  given  by  God  on  Sinai, 
the  centre  of  their  moral  faith  ?  Who  is  it  that  says, 
“  Many  will  say  to  Me  in  that  Day,  Lord,  Lord,  have 
we  not  prophesied  in  Thy  name  ?  and  in  Thy  name 
cast  out  devils  ?  and  in  Thy  name  done  many  wonder¬ 
ful  works  ?  and  then  will  I  profess  unto  them  I  never 
knew  you,  depart  from  Me.”  In  every  word  of  that 
wonderful  sermon  He  spoke  as  ruler  and  as  judge. 
He  who  can  exercise  such  authority  must  be  in¬ 
finitely  more  than  man.  He  is  the  ruler  of  man’s 
conscience.  He  is  the  authority  of  the  conscience  of 
the  race.  He  is  the  Son  of  man  and  the  Son  of  God, 
who  shall  sit  upon  the  throne  of  judgment,  and  be¬ 
fore  Him  all  nations  shall  be  gathered,  and  He  shall 
render  unto  every  man  according  to  his  deeds.  It  is 
that  faith  in  Christ,  as  our  judge  and  our  conscience, 
which  clothes  His  moral  precepts  with  supreme 
authority.  Other  moralists  have  said  very  much  the 
same  things  but  they  have  fallen  powerless  upon  the 
world.  They  have  been  regarded  as  impractical 
dreams. 

The  fact  is  that  the  doctrines  and  the  ethics  of 
Christianity  stand  or  fall  together.  Christian  mo¬ 
rality  is  rooted  in  our  relation  to  God  in  Christ.  If 


76 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Christ  had  only  been  a  man  or  the  greatest  of  moral 
philosophers,  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  would  long 
ago  have  been  relegated  to  the  region  of  poetry.  It 
would  have  lived  in  literature  as  a  pathetic  ideal 
dream  of  a  hope  unfulfilled.  The  moral  faith  and  the 
moral  reason  in  us  would  see  in  Christ  the  perfect 
life,  but  with  it  the  consciousness  in  humanity  of 
moral  weakness  would  testify  to  our  utter  inability  to 
obey  His  laws.  The  demands  made  upon  us  by  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  are  impossible  except  upon 
the  assumption  of  divine  help  and  redeeming  grace. 
They  can  only  be  explained  by  what  He  said  to 
Nicodemus,  “  Ye  must  be  born  again ;  ”  to  the  woman 
of  Samaria  at  the  well,  “  Whosoever  drinketh  of  the 
water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall  never  thirst ;  ”  to  the 
disciples,  “  I  am  the  vine,  ye  are  the  branches  ” ; 
“  without  Me  ye  can  do  nothing.”  The  divine 
morality  implies  the  divine  life  to  fulfil  it.  If 
Christ  calls  us  to  a  life  that  is  beyond  our  natural 
strength,  a  righteousness  that  is  impossible  to  us  by 
nature,  He  means  that  we  shall  ask  Him  for  that 
strength  with  the  simple  faith  that  He  will  give  it. 
He  says  that  He  will  become  ours  and  if  we  abide  in 
Him  He  will  abide  in  us.  To  isolate  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  from  the  gospel  of  Christ,  as  our  moral  strength 
and  our  God  and  Saviour,  is  to  render  it  unintelligible 
and  impossible. 

Men  will  not  do  right  or  strive  after  perfection  be- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


rr 

cause  we  bid  them  to  do  it.  They  want  forgiveness 
for  the  past  and  strength  for  the  future.  That 
strength  they  know  is  not  in  themselves  or  in  any¬ 
thing  that  nature  can  give ;  it  is  in  the  supernatural, 
it  is  in  God.  Faith  in  the  supernatural  is  the  sanction 
of  the  gospel  morality  and  the  reason  justifies  the 
faith. 

We  have  seen  the  fallacy  of  the  attempt,  under  the 
influence  of  the  new  philosophy,  to  separate  doctrine 
and  morality  in  Christianity.  Christ,  as  Christian 
faith  believes  in  Him,  is  the  foundation,  the  strength, 
and  the  authority  of  the  moral  life  of  the  believer. 
The  idea  of  duty  to  Him  and  dependence  upon  Him 
is  the  vital  force  of  character  in  the  individual  and  in 
the  Christian  Church.  Faith  in  Christ  involves  the 
assent  of  the  reason  to  facts  and  truths  in  the  gospels 
as  to  what  He  has  done  for  us  and  who  He  is,  but  as 
a  consequence  of  that,  it  involves  a  receptive  attitude 
of  the  mind  and  the  heart  to  Christ  Himself ;  a  dying 
to  self  and  a  submission  to  Him.  Our  faith  in  his¬ 
torical  Christianity  is  imbedded  and  implicit  as  the 
motive  force  in  the  heart  of  our  spiritual  Christianity. 
His  person  and  His  work  are  the  inspiration  and  the 
guarantee  of  our  surrender  to  Him  and  obedience  to 
Him.  We  must  believe  in  doctrines  but  we  cannot 
live  on  them  as  apprehended  by  the  reason  alone. 
For  every  doctrine  of  our  creed  there  must  be  a 
spiritual  equivalent  assimilated  from  it,  transmuted 


78 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


out  of  it  by  a  living  faith,  into  our  hearts,  our  life, 
our  duty. 

We  have  seen  that  the  morality  of  Christianity 
cannot  stand  without  the  doctrine  of  Christianity. 
Can  duty  stand  alone?  Is  a  sense  of  duty  a  self- 
operating  force  in  the  mind,  self-sufficient  and  self- 
sustaining  ?  Has  it  no  connections,  no  beliefs  beyond 
it  and  above  it  ?  Or  if  it  has  connections,  are  they 
abstractions,  principles,  deductions  of  reason,  instinct¬ 
ive  impulses  with  no  embodiment  that  gives  them 
voice,  coherence,  personality  and  authority?  What 
is  the  working  force  in  Christianity  manifested 
in  every  age  in  the  missionary  activity  of  the 
Church  ?  What  constitutes  the  urgency  of  its  appeal, 
its  sacrifice,  its  prayer?  Why  is  it  that  this  mis¬ 
sionary  spirit  is  the  criterion  of  her  vitality?  We 
send  missionaries  to  the  heathen  and,  thank  God !  in 
a  thousand  Sunday-schools  and  homes  our  children 
are  taught  to  give  and  to  pray  for  missions.  Why  ? 
Is  it  because  we  hold  the  heathen  to  be  condemned 
for  not  believing  in  a  Saviour  of  whom  they  have 
never  heard  ?  Archbishop  Tait,  one  of  the  great  men 
who  have  presided  over  the  English  Church,  rebuked 
one  of  his  clergy  in  a  charge  as  far  back  as  1869,  who 
in  an  appeal  for  missionary  effort  had  said  “  at  every 
ticking  of  the  clock,  in  every  four  and  twenty  hours, 
from  month  to  month,  and  year  to  year,  God  sends  a 
heathen  straight  to  never  ending  misery.”  God  for- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


79 


bid  that  any  clergyman  could  be  found  to  use  such  an 
argument  for  missions  to-day. 

Our  thought  of  God  and  our  conception  of  His  re¬ 
lations  to  mankind  in  Christ  have  advanced  far  be¬ 
yond  the  possibility  of  holding  such  a  doctrine 
concerning  the  heathen.  There  is  certainly  more 
probability  that  Christians  will  be  judged  for  not 
taking  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen,  than  that  the 
heathen  will  be  judged  for  not  following  a  light  they 
have  never  seen,  and  for  not  believing  a  Gospel  they 
have  never  heard.  Duty  to  Christ  is  the  perennial 
spring  in  the  missionary  spirit  of  the  Church.  It  is 
His  command  which  is  laid  upon  it  and  which  has 
never  been  revoked.  Every  missionary  revival  is  only 
a  renewed  recognition  of  that  obligation  to  Christ. 
Every  missionary,  who  leaves  his  home  for  a  heathen 
land,  feels  that  command  upon  his  conscience.  Put  it 
off  as  he  may,  it  follows  him.  He  goes  and  finds 
peace  because  it  is  his  duty  to  go.  In  all  arguments 
about  missions  the  question  at  last  returns  to  that  one 
supreme  argument,  duty  to  Christ.  The  world  spirit 
disposes  of  the  subject  of  missions  with  the  polite 
scorn  in  the  question,  “  Why  not  leave  the  heathen  to 
the  mercies  of  God  ?  Surely  His  mercies  are  greater 
than  yours.”  Christianity  answers  by  another  ques¬ 
tion.  “  Would  you  apply  that  principle  to  the  poor 
and  the  sick  and  the  destitute  around  you  ?  God’s 
mercy  is  over  them  and  He  will  care  for  them.”  If  so, 


80 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


yon  would  put  an  end  to  the  ministrations  of  all 
human  brotherhood,  and  would  dry  up  the  springs  of 
every  charity  and  blot  out  from  human  life  all  that  is 
beautiful  and  noble  in  sacrifice  for  one  another.  If 
the  needy  sick  in  a  city  need  a  hospital,  God’s  mercy 
is  over  them  ;  but  He  does  not  build  a  hospital  by  a 
miracle.  He  employs  our  hands  and  our  money  to 
build  it,  and  we  are  educated  and  our  hearts  are  en¬ 
larged  by  building  it.  We,  who  have,  are  the  repre¬ 
sentatives  of  God’s  pity  and  love  to  those  who  have 
not.  Your  brother  is  starving.  You  pass  him  by  and 
leave  him  to  the  mercy  of  God,  and  he  starves.  God 
does  not  send  him  manna  down  from  Heaven.  We 
have  food,  and  Christ  commands  us  to  minister  to 
our  brother.  In  every  act  of  mercy  we  are  being 
moved  and  transformed  by  His  spirit,  and  our  char¬ 
acter  is  being  redeemed  by  His  Grace. 

Missions  to  the  heathen  are  identical  in  principle 
with  our  common  daily  duties  to  one  another.  It 
may  be  that  God  has  some  unrevealed  purposes  of 
mercy  towards  the  heathen  which  we  will  never  know 
until  the  restoration  of  all  things,  but  that  is  not  the 
question.  Christ  knew  all  about  the  present  and  the 
future  of  the  heathen,  and  His  command  was  to  go 
forth  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  every  creature.  We 
know  that  the  redemption  of  Christ  extends  to  all 
the  families  of  men,  and  alters  the  position  of  man 
as  man.  The  Church  knows  that  all  men  are  capable 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


81 


of  salvation  in  and  through  Christ  and  Christ  alone. 
She  knows  that  every  other  agency  has  failed  and  will 
fail,  and  we  are  to-day  seeing  that  this  Gospel  is  the 
power  of  salvation  for  human  nature  in  its  deepest 
degradations. 

Ho  speculations  of  ours  as  to  God’s  uncovenanted 
plans  and  purposes  can,  for  a  moment,  affect  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  our  plain  duty  to  Christ  to  obey  His  com¬ 
mand.  Duty  to  Christ !  That  is  the  wonder  of  the 
Christian  Church.  W hen  other  arguments  for  or 
against  Christianity  have  been  repeated  until  they 
have  lost  their  meaning,  that  goes  on  undiminished  in 
its  power  and  unanswerable  in  its  evidence. 

Paley’s  argument  is  intellectually  cold,  but  it  has  in 
it  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Duty  to  Christ,  to  an  un¬ 
seen  Lord  and  Saviour  humbled  the  power  of  the 
proudest  of  earthly  sovereignties  and  laid  the  found¬ 
ations  of  the  Church  we  have  been  building  on  ever 
since.  The  early  Christians  were  men.  They  shrank 
from  suffering  as  we  do,  as  human  nature  does,  but 
when  it  came  to  denying  Christ  that  was  another 
thing.  Duty  to  Him  was  incommensurable  with  fire 
and  with  torture ;  they  are  not  in  the  same  category. 
The  soldier  takes  his  place  before  the  enemy’s  bat¬ 
tery.  He  trembles  from  a  human  fear,  but  that  is 
on]y  a  physical  instinct  of  self-preservation  and  has 
nothing  to  do  with  his  mental  conviction,  his  duty. 
The  front  ranks  are  thinned,  but  those  behind  move  in 


82 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


to  take  their  places,  and  comrade  cheers  comrade  on. 
Philosophers  in  their  studies  may  speculate  and  doubt 
and  do  nothing.  It  is  duty  that  moves  the  world. 
When  Rome  found  that  she  could  do  nothing  by 
killing  the  martyr  Christians,  and  that  as  fast  as 
they  fell  many  more  came  to  take  their  places,  she 
humbled  herself  before  what  ?  Duty.  The  faith, 
the  hope,  the  love  in  duty ;  duty  to  an  unseen  but 
living  Lord. 

A  poet,  one  of  the  two  greatest  of  the  last  century, 
in  a  few  lines  lights  up  the  picture  of  the  heroism,  the 
unconquerable  power  of  duty  in  love  to  Christ,  the 
spirit  of  that  martyr  age.  Every  line  and  every 
word,  so  pure,  so  simple,  has  a  ray  of  light  revealing 
what  human  nature  is  capable  of,  in  meekness  and 
patience  and  courage,  at  the  foot  of  a  Saviour’s  cross. 

It  is  Browning’s  Epitaph  in  the  Catacombs. 


“I  was  born  sickly,  poor  and  mean 
A  slave  ;  no  misery  could  screen 
The  holders  of  the  pearl  of  price 
From  Caesar’s  envy,  therefore  twice 
I  fought  with  beasts,  and  three  times  saw 
My  children  suffer  by  his  law. 

At  last  my  own  release  was  earned. 

I  was  some  time  in  being  burned, 

But  at  the  close  a  hand  came  through 
The  fire  above  my  head  and  drew 
My  soul  to  Christ,  whom  now  I  see. 
Sergius,  a  brother,  writes  for  me 
This  testimony  on  the  wall  — 

For  me,  I  have  forgot  it  all.” 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


83 


In  the  calm  of  the  other  side  he  has  no  hate  for 
Caesar.  He  thinks  little  of  all  the  sufferings  and 
probation  of  the  world.  He  is  with  Christ.  He  has 
forgotten  it  all.  Here  we  have  human  nature,  with 
its  capacities  raised  to  their  highest  power  by  a 
spiritual  force  which  transcends  all  the  possibilities 
of  antagonistic  material  forces,  and  links  it  in  duty 
and  love  to  eternity  and  to  God. 

A  remarkable  woman,  whose  portrayals  of  human 
nature  in  the  realm  of  fiction  will  live  longer  perhaps 
than  any  other  contributions  of  the  last  century  in 
that  department  of  literature,  exclaimed  to  a  friend 
a  year  before  her  death  in  a  moment  of  intense 
earnestness,  “  God  !  Immortality  !  Duty  !  How  in¬ 
conceivable  is  the  first ;  how  unbelievable  is  the 
second  ;  how  absolute  is  the  third  !  ”  The  nescience 
philosophy,  to  which  we  have  referred  in  relation  to 
its  disastrous  influence  for  error,  both  without  and 
within  the  Christian  Church,  shattered  the  faith  of 
this  remarkable  person.  But  the  exclamation  sum¬ 
ming  up  her  unbelief  contains  a  germ  of  belief,  which 
is  the  logical  refutation  of  her  negations.  God,  she 
says,  is  inconceivable.  Yes !  inconceivable  to  the 
imagination.  “  Immortality  is  unbelievable.”  Yes  ! 
unbelievable  to  the  imagination,  because  imagination 
is  not  the  faculty  by  which  we  see  spiritual  things,  or 
by  which  we  are  connected  with  them.  It  is  a  faculty 
adapting  the  mind  to  a  visible  world,  not  to  an  in- 


84 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


visible.  It  is  the  picture  making  power.  Its  combi¬ 
nations  are  composed  of  the  colors,  the  forms,  the 
personalities  we  have  seen,  the  sounds  we  have  heard 
but  not  of  things  beyond  the  finite.  St.  Paul,  de¬ 
scribing  immortality  in  Christ,  says,  “  eye  hath  not 
seen  nor  ear  heard  neither  have  entered  into  the  heart 
of  man,  the  things  which  God  hath  prepared  for  them 
who  love  Him.” 1 

It  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  believe  even  physical 
facts  or  phenomena  that  we  should  be  able  to  imagine 
them.  Otherwise  our  beliefs  would  be  limited  by  our 
ability  to  reproduce  in  imagination  the  appearances  to 
our  senses  of  the  things  we  have  seen  here  upon  earth, 
or  the  feelings  we  have  experienced  in  our  conscious¬ 
ness.  An  inhabitant  of  the  tropics  could  not  imagine 
that  water  could  be  turned  into  a  substance  as  hard  as 
stone,  and  would  refuse  to  believe  it  until  the  know¬ 
ledge  is  communicated  to  him  by  visible  demonstra¬ 
tion.  If  beliefs  are  to  be  limited  to  constructions  of 
imagination,  we  would  be  driven  to  scepticism  about 
everything  except  the  things  we  have  seen.  We  have 
never  seen  our  own  spirits,  our  own  minds  and  it 
is  impossible  to  imagination  to  construct  a  picture  of 
them.  Our  beliefs  in  the  unseen  and  spiritual  truths 
transcend  the  powers  of  imagination  either  to  origi¬ 
nate  or  to  grasp  them.  When  reason  and  faith  lay 
hold  upon  spiritual  truths  imagination  comes  in  to 

1 1  Cor.  2  :  9. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


85 


help  them  by  making  a  picture,  by  pointing  out  an 
analogy,  by  furnishing  a  symbol,  by  creating  a  word 
or  a  form  to  hold  the  idea ;  but  the  word  is  not  the 
idea,  the  symbol  is  not  the  reality.  They  are  only 
helps  to  the  mind  in  holding  them. 

blow  the  danger  is  that  in  spiritual  things  we  iden¬ 
tify  the  form  in  which  it  comes  to  us  with  the  reality, 
and  that  is  equivalent  to  subordinating  reason  and 
faith,  to  imagination.  The  tendency  of  human  nature, 
even  in  the  highest  order  of  minds,  is  just  in  this  di¬ 
rection.  Spinoza  said  that  “  to  speak  of  an  incarnation 
of  God  taking  upon  Him  the  nature  of  man  is  just  as 
absurd  as  to  conceive  of  the  circle  taking  upon  it 
the  nature  of  the  square.” 1  The  absurdity  evidently 
emerges  in  Spinoza’s  mind  from  the  attempt  of  the 
imagination,  dealing  with  the  mathematical  relations 
of  material  things,  to  form  a  conception  of  the  nature 
of  God  and  to  originate  and  support  a  belief  in  revela¬ 
tion.  He  employs  his  imagination  to  arrive  at  a 
knowledge  of  God  as  revealed  in  Christ  and,  imagina¬ 
tion  failing  him,  he  concludes  the  absurdity  of  reve¬ 
lation.  Mr.  Spencer  imagines  that  he  has  disposed  of 
the  prophesies  of  an  incarnate  Saviour  and  their  ful¬ 
filment  when  he  asks  the  question,  “  If  we  can  possibly 
believe  that  the  cause  to  which  we  can  put  no  limits  in 
time  or  space,  and  of  which  our  entire  solar  system  is 
a  relatively  infinitesimal  product,  took  the  disguise  of 

1  Caird’s  Philosophy  of  Religion. 


86 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


a  man  for  the  purpose  of  covenanting  with  a  shepherd 
chief  of  Syria.”1  Here  we  have  a  negation  of  revel¬ 
ation  built  upon  the  imagination  of  the  stupendous  dis¬ 
tance  between  the  greatness  of  God  and  man’s  little¬ 
ness.  All  minds  feel  the  impression  and  find  in  it  a 
temptation  to  doubt ;  but  the  yielding  to  it  is  another 
thing.  That  is  renouncing  reason  and  faith,  con¬ 
science  and  revelation  for  an  imagination  built  upon 
material  things.  David  felt  the  pressure  as  he 
watched  his  flocks  by  night  and,  looking  upward  at 
the  sky,  exclaimed,  “  When  I  consider  Thy  heavens, 
the  work  of  Thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars 
which  Thou  hast  ordained;  What  is  man  that  Thou 
art  mindful  of  him  ?  and  the  son  of  man  that  Thou 
visitest  him  ?  ” 2  The  Psalmist  from  his  own  experi¬ 
ence  gives  a  picture  of  the  shadow  cast  upon  faith  in 
God,  in  the  universal  consciousness  of  the  race,  by  the 
magnitudes  of  nature  contrasted  with  the  apparent 
insignificance  of  man. 

Yielding  to  the  negative  imagination  which  obscures 
reason  and  conscience  is  at  the  root,  as  Bishop  Butler 
says,  of  all  error.  It  is  the  essential  principle  of  idol¬ 
atry.  The  Psalmist  transcends  the  spell  of  the  imag- 
nation.  Beason  and  faith,  revelation  and  his  own 
experience  of  God’s  dealings  with  him  opened  his 
eyes  to  see  in  human  nature  something  infinitely 

1  Herbert  Spencer’s  Ecclesiastical  Institutions,  p.  704. 

2  Psalm  8:3,  4. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


87 


greater  than  the  stars,  or  all  the  material  magnitudes 
of  the  universe.  He  saw  too  by  an  irresistible  logic 
that,  if  God  is  infinite,  though  as  regards  space  He 
may  be  infinitely  far,  He  must  also  be  infinitely  near 
to  a  creature  He  has  made  in  His  own  image ;  and 
that  there  could  be,  in  the  nature  of  things,  nothing 
strange  that  He  would  draw  a  Syrian  shepherd  to  His 
side  and  seal  him  with  a  covenant,  which  had  for  its 
purpose,  not  the  aggrandizement  of  the  shepherd  him. 
self,  but  the  blessing  through  Him  to  all  the  children 
of  men. 

The  confusion  of  thought  in  the  exclamation  of  the 
remarkable  woman  referred  to,  was  the  substitution 
of  inconceivable  and  unbelievable  for  the  unimagina¬ 
ble.  She  identified  conception  and  belief  in  unseen 
things  with  imagination ;  but  imagination  gives  up, 
comes  to  a  blank  wall  upon  the  borders  of  the  spirit¬ 
ual  world,  and  sees  nothing  tangible  beyond.  She 
had  been  educated  in  the  philosophy  of  Spinoza  and 
Spencer  and  Lewes,  the  philosophy  of  void  and  nega¬ 
tion  ;  but  when  she  comes  to  duty,  to  conscience,  to 
the  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  her  reason  asserts  itself. 
Her  teachers  accounted  for  conscience  and  duty  as 
social  instincts,  developed  by  mechanical  laws,  by  ex¬ 
pediency,  by  the  accumulation  of  experience  that 
certain  modes  of  conduct  were  best  for  the  happiness 
of  the  whole,  and  these  things  were  called  right ; 
certain  others  were  detrimental  to  the  happiness  of 


88 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


the  individual  and  of  society,  and  these  things  were 
called  wrong.  Morality,  duty  is  thus  a  development 
out  of  human  experience  upon  the  basis  of  expedi¬ 
ency.  Her  reason  was  too  keen  for  that  illusion. 
She  recognized  it  as  a  vain  imagination.  She  saw  her 
own  failings  and  they  lived  in  her  memory ;  they  were 
personal,  her  own,  not  another’s.  Duty  was  her  last 
hold  upon  a  personal  God,  a  kind  of  unconscious  faith 
and  reason  that  would  not  let  her  go. 

She  knew  the  meaning  of  philosophical  terms  and 
she  exclaims  “duty,  how  absolute!”  and  absolute  is 
identical  with  infinite.  It  has  been  said  that  “  the  in¬ 
finite  nature  of  duty  is  a  distinct  and  specific  creation 
of  Christianity,  and  the  sense  of  it,  as  a  power  over 
the  life  and  a  permanent  and  growing  force  and  in¬ 
spiration  to  conduct,  is  linked  to  two  other  infinities ; 
the  infinity  of  God  and  the  infinity  of  our  communion 
with  Him,  and  our  portion  in  an  endless  life  with 
Him.  We  could  not  have  a  sense  of  the  infinitude  of 
duty  if  our  minds  were  absolutely  vacant  of  a  convic¬ 
tion  of  God  and  a  life  in  the  future  with  Him.  We 
cannot  have  an  infinite  sense  of  duty  controlling  our 
practical  life,  forming  an  atmosphere  around  our  con¬ 
duct  and  at  the  same  time  believe  that  our  life  vanishes 
into  nothing  after  a  few  brief  years  of  our  earthly  ex¬ 
istence.  The  sense  of  duty  is  the  highest  and  the 
most  active  and  powerful  conviction  that  we  have. 
If  that  sense  is  infinite,  then  its  correlative  with 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


89 


which  it  is  indissolubly  associated  must  be  infinite 
too.  If  duty  has  infinite  relations  to  us,  then  we 
must  have  infinite  relations  to  duty.”  If  this  is 
true,  there  is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that 
duty  has  in  it  an  innate  sense,  an  unconscious  faith 
in  God  and  in  a  future  life.  And  a  proof  of  it  is 
found  in  the  universal  experience  that  in  proportion 
as  human  nature  identifies  itself  with  the  things 
of  time  and  sense,  as  it  substitutes  idolatry  to  the 
God  of  this  world  for  the  living  God,  duty  to 
ourselves,  to  our  brother-men,  to  our  whole  life 
progressively  weakens  its  hold  in  the  atmosphere  of 
the  carnal  mind  and  the  self-bound  view  of  life  and 
of  the  world. 

How  could  we  sacrifice  ourselves  for  others  and  lay 
down  our  lives,  if  need  be,  for  truth,  for  duty,  for  hu¬ 
man  welfare  if  their  life  and  ours  is  conceived  of 
literally  as  a  vapor  that  vanishes  away?  Human 
life  is  too  insignificant  to  trouble  ourselves  about  it. 
The  Epicurean  Creed,  “let  us  eat  and  drink  for  to¬ 
morrow  we  die,”  would  find  no  protest  from  con¬ 
science,  no  warning  from  the  voices  of  faith  in 
eternity  and  in  God  to  stay  its  progress  on  the  way 
to  universal  supremacy  over  mankind.  Duty  cannot 
live  without  faith.  Wherever  we  find  it  faith,  con¬ 
scious  or  unconscious,  is  the  atmosphere  which  gives 
it  vitality.  Duty  implies  faith  in  a  future  life  and 
Christianity,  by  bringing  life  and  immortality  to  light, 


90 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


imparts  to  duty  a  living  hope  instead  of  a  latent 
struggling  instinct  in  the  natural  man.  It  trans¬ 
mutes  a  tentative  expectation  into  a  habit  of  mind, 
into  an  anchor  that  holds  faster  as  the  sea  is  wilder. 
By  faith  in  Christ  duty  finds  in  redeeming  love  the 
courage  to  lay  aside  the  weights  of  the  past,  to  tran¬ 
scend  the  memory  of  sins  and  wanderings  and  to  live 
for  the  future.  By  faith  Christ  progressively  educates 
the  conscience  to  see  the  reason  and  the  blessedness  in 
duty  and  patience  and  self-abnegation,  by  presenting 
a  life,  which,  when  all  earthly  ideals  have  been  shat¬ 
tered,  will  stand  as  the  one  ideal  for  the  homage  and 
the  love  of  human  hearts. 

We  have  spoken  of  conscious  and  unconscious  faith. 
Doubtless  the  highest  form  of  faith  and  that  towards 
which  all  faith  is  growing,  is  the  conscious  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ  and  the  work  He  has  accomplished  for  us 
and  what  we  owe  to  Him.  This  is  the  ideal  faith. 
But  how  much  of  the  faith  of  even  the  most  earnest 
Christians  is  far  short  of  that.  How  many  duties 
they  do  when  it  cannot  be  said  that  they  are  done 
consciously  for  Him  and  because  they  are  thinking  of 
Him.  Many  other  motives  may  mingle  with  the 
Christian  motive.  The  activity,  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  springs  out  of  feelings  in  the  heart  and  an  atti¬ 
tude  of  mind  which  Christian  faith  has  formed  in 
them,  and  the  act  of  duty  is  done  spontaneously  and 
unconsciously. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


91 


If  this  is  true  of  Christians,  may  it  not  be  true  of 
those  who  cannot  call  themselves  Christians,  and  yet 
strive  to  do  their  duty  ?  Is  not  the  impulse  to  duty, 
to  goodness,  to  truth  in  them  an  unconscious  faith 
which  has  its  origin  in  the  inspiration  of  His  spirit 
and  which,  if  it  has,  He  will  own?  What  else  can 
Christ  mean,  when  in  illustrating  the  realities  of  the 
final  judgment  and  looking  over  the  whole  range 
of  human  life  in  its  infinite  variety  of  knowledge 
and  of  ignorance,  of  opportunity  and  of  limitation 
of  light  and  of  darkness,  He  says,  “Then  shall 
the  King  say  unto  them  on  His  right  hand,  come  ye 
blessed  of  My  Father,  inherit  the  kingdom  prepared 
for  you  from  the  foundation  of  the  world :  For  I  was 
an  hungered  and  ye  gave  Me  meat :  I  was  thirsty  and 
ye  gave  Me  drink :  I  was  sick  and  ye  visited  Me :  I 
was  in  prison  and  ye  came  unto  Me.  Then  shall  the 
righteous  answer  Him  saying,  Lord,  when  saw  we 
Thee  an  hungered  and  fed  Thee,  or  thirsty  and  gave 
Thee  drink?  And  the  King  shall  answer  and  say 
unto  them,  Yerily  I  say  unto  you  inasmuch  as  ye 
have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these  My 
brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto  Me.”  He  seems  to 
comprehend  all  goodness,  all  sacrifice,  all  duty  for 
love  and  for  truth  as  duty  to  Him. 

Or  again  He  says,  when  He  seems  to  be  looking  be¬ 
yond  the  Christian  Church,  the  fold  of  the  visible 
kingdom  upon  earth,  and  thinking  of  the  seekers  after 


92 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


the  truth,  the  children  of  duty  without  the  light  who 
are  striving  to  walk  by  the  dim  light  which  they 
have,  “  Other  sheep  I  have  which  are  not  of  this  fold  : 
them  also  I  must  bring  and  they  shall  hear  My  voice, 
and  there  shall  be  one  fold  and  one  shepherd.” 

The  Christian  philosophy  of  duty  seems  to  authorize 
the  hope  that  this  may  in  some  sense  be  a  true  inter¬ 
pretation  of  His  wonderful  words. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


LECTUEE  III 


FAITH  AND  REASON 

Christian  thought  passing  beyond  the  conception  of  antagonism  be¬ 
tween  reason  and  faith.  Old  controversy  revived.  Mr.  Balfour’s 
“  Foundations  of  Belief.”  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd’s  “Social  Evolu¬ 
tion.”  The  unity  of  reason  and  faith  in  revelation,  in  presenta¬ 
tion  of  doctrine  and  in  Christian  ethics.  Difference  between 
ethics  of  Christianity  and  all  other  systems.  Scripture  makes 
reason  and  faith  basis  of  morality.  Examples  from  the  New 
Testament.  Belief  in  its  ideal  form,  harmonious  action  of  reason 
and  faith.  Belief  distinguished  from  notions  of  the  intellect  or 
conclusions  of  logic.  From  feeling.  Belief  leads  to  action  ;  the 
practical  power  in  life.  Belief  the  secret  of  power  of  great 
leaders  and  men  of  action.  Illustrations  from  portrayals  of 
literature.  Shakespeare’s  Hamlet.  Philosophy  of  Hamlet’s 
character.  Mozley’s  criticism.  Illustrations  from  social  and 
political  life.  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  the  factory  laws.  Reforms 
by  Mr.  Wilberforce.  Government  depends  upon  the  character  of 
the  people.  Remedy  for  evils  of  the  prevalence  of  divorce.  His¬ 
tory  of  the  Christian  Church  reveals  the  survival  of  Christianity 
due  to  Christian  character  appealing  to  reasonable  faith  of  mankind. 
Gibbon’s  five  causes  for  spread  of  Christianity.  Reason  for  failure 
of  scepticism  in  attacks  upon  Christianity.  Controversy  of  the 
Church  with  Gnosticism.  Prolonged  controversy  in  modern  world 
between  the  advance  of  knowledge  and  doctrine  of  verbal  infalli¬ 
bility  of  the  Bible.  Plato  on  dangers  to  reason  and  faith  when  they 
outgrow  ancient  forms.  First  contact  of  science  with  the  Church. 
Galileo  and  the  Church.  Controversy  healed  by  reasonable  faith. 
Archbishop  Temple’s  Bampton  lectures,  Religion  and  Science. 
Danger  of  precipitate  judgments.  What  is  personal  faith? 
Faith  a  step  forward  and  each  step  is  confirmed  by  the  reason. 

In  the  last  lecture  we  considered  faith  in  itself  and 
in  its  relations  to  reason  as  furnishing  it  with 

95 


96 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


postulates  from  the  unseen  to  support  morality,  con¬ 
science  and  duty,  from  which  living  beliefs  are 
nourished  and  character  is  formed  in  the  religious 
life. 

TTe  found  in  reason  and  faith,  as  cooperative  and 
implicit,  a  refutation  of  the  idea  not  only  common  to 
popular  thought,  but  to  past  theologies  and  philoso¬ 
phies,  that  religion  is  addressed  not  to  the  head  but  to 
the  heart,  and  that  it  makes  its  appeal  not  to  reason, 
but  to  faith.  I  think  it  may,  with  truth,  be  said  that 
theological  thought  is  passing  beyond  this  conception 
of  antagonism  between  reason  and  faith  which  has 
characterized  so  much  of  its  literature  in  the  past. 

It  is  true  that  two  authors  of  distinction  have  very 
recently  revived  this  controversy,  Mr.  Balfour,  in  his 
“Foundations  of  Belief,"  and  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd,  in 
his  “  Social  Evolution.” 

Mr.  Balfour's  depreciation  of  reason  appears  as  a 
rhetorical  contrast  to  authoritv,  which  he  exalts  as 
the  main  foundation  of  religious  belief.  In  treating 
the  subject  of  authority  we  may  have  the  opportunity 
of  explaining  what  we  consider  his  misapprehensions, 
which  are  emphasized  by  his  brilliant  writing.1 

"With  reference  to  Mr.  Kidd's  book,  which  has  been 
widely  read,  it  mav  be  said  to  belong  to  a  class  below 
the  one  last  mentioned.  The  attack  upon  reason  is  in 
many  passages  bordering  upon  contempt,  and  we 


1  See  Note  8. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


97 


wonder  what  reason  it  is  which  is  the  object  of  his 
animosity,  but  he  nowhere  furnishes  us  with  a  defini¬ 
tion.  He  commends  Christianity  as  having  accom¬ 
plished  great  results  in  the  education  of  the  human 
race,  and  points  to  evolution  as  its  cause,  and  reason 
as  its  consistent  enemy.  He  does  not  descend  to 
facts  in  support  of  these  solemn  generalizations.  His 
views  are  wide  and  his  delineations  of  them  are 
eloquently  expressed,  but  his  keys  do  not  fit  the  lock 
he  is  trying  to  open.  He  will  be  read  by  persons 
whose  imaginations  are  kindled  by  what  appears  to 
be  philosophical  generalizations,  and  who  do  not  care 
for  precision  of  thought,  or  for  facts  to  support 
theories.  His  book  has  nothing  of  value  to  contribute 
to  our  subject,  although  he  has  many  things  to  say 
about  it. 

The  doctrine  of  the  unity  of  reason  and  faith  has 
been  anticipated  in  revelation,  in  literature,  in  social 
and  political  development,  and  in  the  history  of  the 
Christian  Church.  To  the  consideration  of  this  subject 
this  lecture  will  be  given. 

The  old  controversy  over  the  supposed  antagonism 
between  reason  and  faith  has  no  place  in  the  inspired 
writings  of  the  Hew  Testament.  It  never  seems  to 
have  occurred  to  St.  Paul,  the  leading  writer  and  per¬ 
haps  the  greatest  of  the  inspired  thinkers  in  the 
doctrinal  development  of  Christianity,  that  there 
could  be  a  natural  antagonism  between  these  faculties 


98 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


and  attributes  of  the  human  mind.  He  associates 
reason  and  faith  as  correlative  factors,  and  constituent 
elements  in  every  act  of  real  belief  in  the  truths  of 
Christianity.  He  has  no  doubts  about  the  facts  of 
the  gospel  history  because  he  knows  them.  In  his 
mind  they  occupy  the  position  of  certitude.  When 
he  comes  to  the  interpretation  of  the  facts  and  the 
spiritual  truths  which  grow  out  of  them  and  are  re¬ 
vealed  by  them,  he  appeals  to  the  spiritual  intelli¬ 
gence,  to  the  moral  reason  and  the  conscience.  Is 
it  the  atonement  for  sin?  On  the  one  side  it  is 
supernatural,  on  the  other  it  is  natural.  It  meets  a 
want,  it  fulfils  an  expectation  of  human  nature.  It 
finds  a  preparation  for  receiving  it  in  the  reason  and 
the  conscience  of  man  as  man.  The  sense  of  sin  is 
the  preparation  and  the  introduction  in  natural  re¬ 
ligion  for  the  atonement  revealed  in  the  gospel.  So 
with  every  spiritual  truth  in  the  Christian  faith.  He 
points  to  a  background  of  reason  leading  up  to  faith 
and  making  the  act  of  faith  reasonable. 

The  same  principle  is  recognized  in  his  presentation 
of  Christian  ethics.  He  nowhere  enjoins  duties  or 
gives  specific  directions  of  conduct  to  the  Christian 
converts  to  whom  he  is  writing,  as  arbitrary  com¬ 
mands  to  be  obeyed  by  blind  submission,  as  a  mere 
string  of  precepts,  or  a  list  of  rules  to  be  mechanically 
followed.  Christ,  to  him,  is  the  moral  ruler  of  the 
race,  the  enlightener  and  the  educator  of  the  reason 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


99 


and  the  conscience  and  the  moral  sense  of  mankind  ; 
and  therefore  in  the  recognition  of  His  authority  these 
are  called  upon  for  their  cooperative  and  consentient 
testimony.  His  conception  of  Christian  morality  is 
that  of  a  living  spirit  of  service  to  a  living  Master, 
believed  in  by  the  reason  and  by  the  act  of  faith. 
Therefore  when  he  lays  down  a  principle  of  ethics, 
he  explains  how  natural  and  reasonable  it  is. 

When  he  is  called  upon  for  his  decision  in  the  con¬ 
troversy  whether  Christians  should  eat  food  which 
had  been  offered  to  idols,  a  question  which  had 
agitated  all  the  churches  in  the  heathen  cities,  he 
appeals  to  reason  upon  the  facts  of  the  case.  An 
idol,  he  says,  is  nothing  at  all.  It  is  an  unreality.  It 
has  no  sense,  no  moral  nor  spiritual  significance, 
therefore  it  is  preposterous  to  suppose  that  it  can 
defile  that  which  is  offered  at  its  shrine.  If  it  is 
a  nonentity,  your  reason  tells  you  that  it  can 
neither  curse  nor  bless,  and  the  idea  that  it  can  impart 
evil  to  the  material  thing  that  is  offered  to  it  is  an 
irrational  superstition.  Food  offered  to  idols  is  there¬ 
fore  as  free  from  harm  in  itself  as  any  other  food. 
But  if  there  are  among  you  Christian  brethren  of 
morbid  imagination  and  weak  reason,  who  attach  the 
idea  of  defilement  to  the  association  of  food  with  an 
idol,  then  the  great  principle  of  self-sacrifice  supersedes 
every  other  consideration.  Your  Christian  brother¬ 
hood  is  your  highest  relation  to  each  other,  and  your 


100 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


duties,  springing  out  of  that  relation,  are  your  noblest 
duties.  “  Wherefore  if  meat  maketh  my  brother  to 
offend  I  will  eat  no  flesh  while  the  world  standeth.”  1 
The  ethical  principle  of  brotherhood  revealed  and  ap¬ 
plied  to  human  relations  by  Christianity,  and  by  it 
alone,  conditions  and  controls  that  other  principle  of 
Christian  freedom,  so  that  an  act  of  conduct  innocent 
in  itself,  becomes  a  sin  when  it  wounds  the  conscience 
and  the  weak  faith  of  a  brother. 

This  decision,  upon  what  was  then  a  burning 
question  among  the  early  Christians,  was  based  upon 
principles  which  are  decisive  upon  innumerable  ques¬ 
tions  which  present  themselves  in  daily  life  at  the 
bar  of  a  Christian  conscience. 

A  legal  principle,  emerging  into  the  development  of 
the  law  from  judicial  investigations  and  decisions  in 
the  past,  becomes  the  basis  and  the  rational  authority 
for  future  decisions,  an  assumption  upon  which  future 
investigations  begin,  without  the  process  of  arguing 
and  proving  them  over  again.  They  are  common 
property  recognized  by  the  reason  of  civilized  society. 
They  are  the  judgments  of  the  best  intelligence  and 
the  educated  conscience,  which  are  accepted  by  the 
body  of  society,  not  because  each  individual  has 
argued  the  question  for  himself,  nor  because  he  sub¬ 
mits  blindly  to  authority  without  thinking  for  him¬ 
self,  but  because  he  has  common  sense  to  trust  the 


1 1  Cor.  8  :  13. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


101 


judgment  of  those  who  are  best  qualified  to  judge. 
The  authority  to  which  he  submits  is  faith  in  be¬ 
lieving  where  there  are  the  best  reasons  for  believ¬ 
ing. 

Both  the  doctrines  and  the  ethics  of  Christianity 
have  the  ground  of  their  acceptance  in  the  structural 
harmony  of  the  highest  faculties  of  our  intellectual  and 
spiritual  nature.  There  is  not  an  ethical  precept,  from 
Christ  Himself  or  from  the  inspired  writings  of  the 
Hew  Testament,  which  does  not  assume  as  a  practical 
basis  of  ethical  obligation,  absolute  conformity  to  the 
natural  reason  and  conscience.  The  immense  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  ethics  of  Christianity  and  all  other 
systems,  is  the  new  knowledge  with  which  Christianity 
supplies  the  reason,  the  new  revelation  of  duty  with 
which  it  quickens  the  conscience.  When  reason  is 
supplied  with  falsehood  its  conclusions  are  vitiated 
into  worthless  or  dangerous  fallacies.  When  it  is 
supplied  with  the  truth  it  infallibly  sheds  light  on  the 
pathway  to  higher  truth.  If  you  feed  a  loom  with 
worthless  material  the  manufactured  garment  will 
also  be  worthless.  If  the  raw  material  you  put  into 
it  is  good  the  product  will  be  genuine.  Faith  in  an 
error  cannot  save  us  from  evil  consequences  of  the 
error.  Reasonable  faith  in  truth,  as  a  spring  of 
action,  under  no  conditions  or  circumstances  can  ever 
lead  us  astray.  In  this  sense,  the  basis  of  Christian 
morality  is  faith  supported  by  reason  and  conscience. 


102 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Antagonism  between  reason  and  faith,  by  the  law 
of  our  nature,  would  be  destruction  to  the  foundations 
of  our  belief  in  Christian  morality  and  in  the  doctrines 
and  revealed  truths  upon  which  the  ethical  system  of 
Christianity  rests,  and  from  which  it  derives  its  au¬ 
thority.  There  is  no  intimation  of  such  a  conflict  or 
of  its  possibility  in  the  New  Testament.  Alienation 
of  the  will  from  God  and  from  righteousness ;  the 
power  of  that  alienated  will  to  set  aside  the  verdict 
of  reason  and  faith  and  to  choose  a  vain  imagination  in 
their  stead ;  to  call  that  philosophy  which  is  no  phi¬ 
losophy  ;  to  build  defenses  and  justifications  upon  the 
false  premises  of  wrong  desires ;  the  yielding  of  the 
higher  to  the  lower  nature  and  the  identifying  the 
spirit  with  the  flesh  ;  eternity  with  time ;  the  birth¬ 
right  of  the  soul  with  the  momentary  gratifications 
of  sense,  these  are  perennial  tendencies  of  the 
natural  man.  This  is  the  antagonism  which  St.  Paul 
describes  when  he  cries,  out  of  the  depths  of  his  ex¬ 
perience,  “  the  flesh,”  that  is  the  whole  world  ward 
side  of  human  nature,  “  lusteth  against  the  Spirit  and 
the  Spirit  against  the  flesh ;  and  these  are  contrary 
the  one  to  the  other.” 1  He  never  speaks  of  faith  war¬ 
ring  against  reason,  or  reason  against  faith.  At  the 
very  foundations  of  belief  they  are  wedded  to  each 
other,  and  the  higher  their  development  under  the 
spiritual  training  of  Christianity,  the  nearer  their 


1  Gal.  5  :  17. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


103 


approach  to  identification ;  so  that  the  Apostle  in 
describing  the  immortal  destiny  of  the  soul  in 
Christ,  speaks  of  an  endless  progress  towards  the 
ideal  that  is  in  Him.  “For  now  we  see  through  a 
glass  darkly ;  but  then  face  to  face :  now  I  know 
in  part;  but  then  shall  I  know  even  as  also  I  am 
known.”  1 

The  growth  of  a  finite  mind  and  spirit  must  be  a 
continuous  progress,  through  time  and  eternity,  in 
knowledge  and  life,  in  reason  and  faith.  The  two 
can  never  dispense  with  one  another  from  the  earliest 
dawn  of  our  mortal  life,  through  the  illimitable  years 
of  our  blessed  immortality.  St.  Paul,  in  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  three  chapters  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Ho¬ 
mans  containing  a  body  of  ethical  precepts,  which  if 
realized  in  human  life  would  necessarily  transform 
the  world,  lays  down  the  far-reaching  and  profound 
principle  underlying  Christian  morality.  “  I  be¬ 
seech  you  therefore  brethren,  by  the  mercies  of 
God  that  ye  present  your  bodies  a  living  sacrifice, 
holy  and  acceptable  to  God,  which  is  your  reasonable 
service.”  2  To  the  natural  man  this  sacrifice  is  un¬ 
reasonable  and  impossible  ;  but  the  new  revelation  in 
Christ  of  duty  and  of  our  destiny,  proclaims  it,  not 
as  an  arbitrary  command,  but  as  a  law  of  conformity 
to  our  nature  as  God  meant  us  to  be ;  that  the  spirit 
should  rule  the  body,  that  the  redeemed  will  and 


1 1  Cor.  13  :  12. 


2  Romans  12  : 1. 


104 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


educated  conscience  should  rule  the  flesh  with  its 
blind  appetites  and  its  wayward  passions,  and  that  in 
Christ  it  is  within  our  power  to  gain  the  victory  over 
the  world  and  all  the  worldward  side  of  our  nature. 
It  is  rational ;  it  is  the  natural  order.  These  passages 
are  illustrations  of  the  assumption  underlying  the  in¬ 
spired  teaching  of  Christianity,  both  in  doctrine  and 
morality,  that  reason  is  not  only  compatible  with 
faith,  but  inseparable  from  it.  If  we  attempt  to 
analyze  our  consciousness  and  our  mental  experiences 
we  find  that  our  faculties  run  into  each  other.  We 
cannot  separate  imagination  and  memory.  We  can¬ 
not  conceive  of  feeling  as  independent  of  the  object 
which  calls  forth  the  feeling.  INo  more  can  we  sepa¬ 
rate  reason  and  faith. 

This  leads  us  to  consider  belief  in  its  ideal  signifi¬ 
cance  as  the  combined  and  harmonious  action  of 
reason  and  faith.  Leave  out  faith  and  belief  has  lost 
its  motive  power.  It  becomes  an  opinion,  a  notion  of 
the  intellect,  a  chain  from  premises  to  conclusions,  an 
abstraction  in  the  air  outside  of  human  nature,  away 
from  the  hopes  and  the  fears,  the  duties  and  the 
struggles  of  life.  It  is  powerless  for  persuasion  and 
impotent  for  action.  Leave  out  reason,  and  faith  has 
lost  its  moorings.  It  is  at  the  mercy  of  impulses  and 
feelings  and  wandering  lights.  It  is  without  a  crit¬ 
ical  faculty  to  “  try  the  spirits  whether  they  are  of 
God.”  It  believes  what  it  chooses  to  believe.  Rea- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


105 


sonable  faith  is  action  of  the  whole  nature  in  harmony 
and  proportion,  and  the  result  is  what  we  call  belief, 
conviction,  certitude. 

We  only  need  to  look  at  life,  indeed  we  need  not 
look  away  from  ourselves,  to  recognize  the  broad  dis¬ 
tinction  between  intellectual  notions  and  beliefs,  as 
the  difference  between  the  abstract  and  the  concrete ; 
between  thought  charged  with  energy  for  action,  and 
thought  evaporating  in  speculation.  Beliefs  cannot 
sit  still.  They  grasp  the  whole  man.  They  move 
the  spirit,  the  imagination  and  the  will.  They  mould 
the  character  in  which  they  grow.  What  is  called 
strength  of  will  is,  in  the  ultimate  analysis  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  strength  of  belief,  definiteness  of 
conviction.  When  a  man  has  beliefs,  convictions,  he 
imparts  confidence  to  other  minds.  This  is  the  secret 
of  the  power  of  the  great  leaders  and  reformers,  dis¬ 
coverers,  teachers  and  preachers  of  the  world.  Belief 
is  contagions  and  magnetic.  It  kindles  sympathies 
between  all  the  heterogeneous  personalities  in  a  vast 
audience,  or  an  army,  or  a  nation,  and  unifies  them 
into  homogeneity  of  feeling  and  fellowship  in  a  com¬ 
mon  cause.  It  creates  character  with  power,  whether 
it  be  upon  the  public  stage  of  the  world  or  in  the 
private  walks  of  life.  Such  characters  have  been 
behind  all  the  great  reforms  which  have  constituted 
the  progressive  steps  in  the  growth  of  civilization. 
Belief,  conviction,  reasonable  faith,  these  are  springs 


106 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


of  the  practical,  the  moral  and  the  intellectual  life  of 
the  race.  The  lack  of  them  is  weakness  ;  the  posses¬ 
sion  of  them  is  the  measure  of  efficiency  and  the 
reservoir  of  the  force  that  moves  human  nature. 
Literature  in  its  portrayals  of  character  abounds  in 
illustrations  of  the  principle. 

Among  the  surprising  examples  of  Shakespeare’s 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and  heart  the  creation 
and  the  character  of  Hamlet  is  a  conspicuous  illustra¬ 
tion.  The  penetrative  criticism  of  Canon  Mozley 
recognizes  in  Hamlet,  in  the  critical  experience  of  his 
life,  a  creation  of  the  poet  illustrating  the  weakness 
and  irresolution  of  mere  largeness  of  thought,  with¬ 
out  a  moving  principle  of  action.  He  says,  “  the  mind 
of  Hamlet  lies  all  abroad  like  the  sea — an  universal 
reflector,  but  wanting  the  self-moving  principle. 
Musing,  reflection  and  irony  upon  all  the  world  super¬ 
sede  action,  and  a  task  evaporates  in  philosophy.”1 
The  terrible  shock  of  his  father’s  death  introduces  him 
to  the  mystery  of  grief.  His  mother’s  marriage  with 
his  father’s  brother,  a  few  weeks  afterwards,  and  that 
brother  seated  on  the  throne  ;  the  festive  gaiety  of 
the  court  in  which  his  mother  participated,  revealed 
to  him  a  capacity  in  fallen  human  nature  for  the 
desecration  of  sacred  affections  and  holy  memories. 
While  brooding  upon  these  wrongs  the  spirit  of  his 
departed  father  appears  to  him  to  tell  him  that  his 


1  Mozley’s  Essays,  vol.  2,  p.  190. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


107 


uncle  and  his  mother  are  the  authors  of  the  crime, 
and  to  charge  him  with  the  sacred  duty  of  avenging 
his  death.  Then  come  the  wild  protest  of  wrath  and 
the  instant  resolve  to  execute  justice  before  the  day 
has  grown  an  hour  older.  “  But,”  says  Mozley,  “  now 
comes  in  the  philosophical  element  in  Hamlet.  It 
occurs  to  him  that  after  all,  this  dreadful  act,  carried 
out  with  such  successful  artifice  and  self-possession,  is 
but  a  sample  of  a  vast  system  of  wrong  and  injustice 
in  this  visible  state  of  things.  The  king  and  queen 
represent  to  his  mind  a  great  evil  power  or  tyranny 
resident  in  the  system.  The  court  of  Denmark,  the 
scene  of  their  crime  and  prosperity,  is  the  world ;  its 
business  and  festivity,  in  which  his  father’s  fate  is  for¬ 
gotten,  the  world’s  stir  and  bustle  burying  thought, 
and  covering  up  wrong  as  soon  as  done ;  its  courtiers, 
the  idle  and  careless  of  mankind  who  look  on  as  spec¬ 
tators  of  injustice  and  do  not  concern  themselves 
about  it.”1  The  criticism  is  true  to  Shakespeare’s 
meaning.  Hamlet  is  lost  in  generalization  and  philos¬ 
ophizing  ;  the  native  hue  of  resolution  is  “  sickbed 
o’er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought.”  He  spends  him¬ 
self  in  reflection  and  satire  upon  the  depravity  of 
mankind.  This  crime  is  only  a  specimen  of  human 
nature,  only  one  in  a  million.  Betribution  upon  this 
wretched  king  and  faithless  queen  may  meet  the  de¬ 
mands  of  this  single  case,  but  still  the  system  goes  on. 


1  Mozley’a  Essays,  vol.  2,  p.  187. 


108 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Evil  is  ubiquitous,  it  is  like  the  air  we  breathe.  He 
exclaims, 


*  “The  time  is  out  of  joint ;  oh  cursed  spite, 

That  even  I  was  born  to  set  it  right.  ” 

So  from  time  to  time  he  puts  off  the  execution  of 
his  task  with  one  excuse  or  another,  and  last  performs 
it,  only  as  it  were  by  accident,  and  in  a  moment  of 
exigency  without  premeditation.  It  is  the  way  with 
philosophy  without  definite  convictions ;  with  criti¬ 
cism,  either  of  religion,  or  society,  or  of  the  world, 
without  principle  or  duty  or  faith,  simply  to  gratify  a 
flippant  tongue.  There  are  thousands  who  minister 
to  their  own  conceit  with  satire  upon  the  sins  and 
follies  of  the  world,  without  lifting  a  hand  to  correct 
its  evils.  There  are  men  and  women  innumerable, 
who  sit  in  our  churches  under  the  appeals  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  for  missions  at  home,  or  in  heathen  lands,  who 
give  nothing,  and  do  nothing,  because  action  has  been 
paralyzed  by  lack  of  intelligent  faith,  and  by  a  self- 
imposed  ignorance  of  what  Christianity  is  doing. 
The  sense  of  duty  to  do  what  our  hands  find  to  do 
has  evaporated  in  a  speculative  scepticism  arising  from 
the  immensity  of  the  task  proposed,  and  the  supposed 
impossibility  of  its  accomplishment. 

Outside  of  our  churches  there  is  a  larger  class 
among  the  educated  and  the  uneducated,  than  even  a 
pessimistic  estimate  would  conceive,  whose  thoughts 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


109 


are  dominated  by  tlie  materialistic  and  necessitarian 
philosophy  ;  who  imagine  that  they  are  talking  sense 
and  thinking  sense  in  looking  at  civilization  as  a  me¬ 
chanical  development  under  law,  and  independent  of 
volition  ;  as  the  growth  of  plants,  or  as  the  order  of 
the  solar  system.  In  the  outcome  of  such  thinking 
we  reach  the  conclusion  that  reason,  faith  and  char¬ 
acter  are  unrealities,  which  condemns  the  premises  as 
irrational  and  unthinkable. 

Convictions,  beliefs  and  freewill  are  the  working 
forces  in  the  evolution  of  mankind.  The  field  of 
social  and  political  life  abounds  in  illustrations  of  this 
principle.  Real  belief,  faith  supported  by  reason, 
leads  to  action. 

How  many  abuses  exist  in  municipal  and  national 
governments,  admitted  by  all,  but  only  believed  in  by 
few,  who  are  left  alone  to  do  the  fighting !  The 
demagogue  is  eloquent  upon  part}r  corruption  in  the 
ranks  of  the  opposition.  Men  of  all  parties  condemn 
social  evils  and  political  corruptions,  but  the  majority 
do  not  really  believe,  in  the  sense  of  a  belief  involving 
the  duty  to  resist  them.  It  is  a  party  shibboleth, 
without  faith  or  reason  in  unseen  principles.  Great 
truths,  practical  and  ethical,  lie  flat  on  the  surface  of 
society ;  everybody  admitting  them,  but  nobody  car¬ 
ing  for  them.  By  and  by  they  take  hold  of  the 
consciences  of  a  few  advocates  who  will  not,  cannot 
let  them  go.  The  rational  conviction  imparts  char- 


110 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


acter,  and  stirs  them  to  action.  The  action  of  a  few 
develops  into  organized  agitation,  and  the  agitation 
arouses  public  feeling  and  kindles  the  imagination 
with  pictures  of  the  iniquity  against  which  the  war¬ 
fare  is  waged.  At  first  the  truth  lay  upon  the  in¬ 
tellect,  upon  the  lower  logical  reason;  now  it  has 
penetrated  into  the  higher  reason  which  moves  the 
conscience,  the  faith  and  the  heart.  This  is  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  all  social  and  political  reforms.  Moral 
progress  in  government  is  a  question,  not  of  knowl¬ 
edge,  but  of  the  character  of  the  people,  who 
are  the  fountains  of  authority  and  the  springs  of 
action. 

The  long  struggle  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  one  of  the 
noblest  statesmen  that  England  has  produced,  resulted 
in  legislation  prohibiting  the  employment  of  children, 
under  a  certain  age,  in  cotton  mills  and  other  manu¬ 
facturing  industries.  The  whole  nation  recognized 
the  evil,  but  it  took  twelve  years  to  educate  it  up  to  a 
living  conviction  of  the  iniquity.  England  was  then 
the  workshop  of  the  world.  The  new  industries 
furnished  work  which  a  child  could  do  as  well  as  a 
man,  and  almost  earn  a  man’s  wrages.  It  was  found 
that  the  cupidity  and  laziness  in  parents  prevailed 
over  parental  instincts  and  human  compassion,  and 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  children,  under  eight 
and  ten  years  of  age,  were  working  in  factories  and 
breathing  the  poisoned  air  for  ten  and  twelve  hours  a 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


111 


day.  It  ought  to  have  been  recognized  as  a  bitter 
wrong  from  the  first ;  but  it  required  years  to  arouse 
the  public  conscience,  not  only  by  agitation  and  pro¬ 
test,  but  by  the  revelation  of  disastrous  results  in  the 
alarming  increase  of  disease  and  death  rate  among  the 
children  of  the  poor  in  the  manufacturing  districts, 
and  deformity  and  dwarfed  development  among  those 
who  survived,  threatening  a  degeneration  of  the  bone 
and  sinew  of  the  English  people. 

When  the  measure  was  introduced  into  Parliament 
it  was  met  by  the  argument  that  it  would  be  an  inva¬ 
sion  of  the  sanctity  of  family  government  by  public 
law,  in  the  denial  of  the  rights  of  parents  over  their 
children ;  as  if  sanctity  could  exist  in  family  govern¬ 
ment  wTith  children  the  victims  of  the  inhumanity  of 
parents.  Again,  the  reform  wTas  opposed  upon  the 
ground  that  the  extension  of  governmental  control 
over  the  domestic  life  of  the  people  in  one  case,  would 
be  the  entering  wedge  for  the  universal  destruction  of 
individual  liberty,  ending  in  absolutism  and  absolutism 
recoiling  into  revolution.  It  wras  the  same  old  fallacy 
of  a  faithless  extreme  of  conservatism,  that  refuses  to 
mend  a  rotten  foundation,  lest  the  whole  fabric  should 
tumble  down  in  the  process.  In  our  own  country 
there  are  signs  that  the  battle  to  save  the  children  of 
the  poor  from  their  parents  and  from  the  greed  of  the 
rich  will  be  fought  over  again  in  our  own  generation. 

It  is  said  that  Mr.  Wilberforce,  after  succeeding  in 


112 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


his  great  battle  for  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade, 
turned  his  attention  to  the  alarming  prevalence  of 
duelling  in  England.  The  principle  of  duelling  is  the 
right  of  personal  revenge  for  insults  or  wrongs.  The 
principle  of  civilization,  as  contrasted  with  savagery, 
is  the  relegation  of  the  vindication  of  justice  and  the 
punishment  of  wrong  from  the  hands  of  individuals 
to  the  hands  of  society,  to  law  and  to  legal  processes. 
That  is  the  broad  distinction  between  barbarism  and 
society  organized  under  law.  Duelling  is  based  upon 
the  assumption  that  a  man  has  a  right,  and  that  it  is 
his  duty  to  leave  the  wife  to  whom  he  is  bound  by 
the  most  sacred  ties  of  life,  to  leave  the  children 
whom  he  has  brought  into  the  world,  to  go  out  on 
what  he  calls  a  field  of  honor  to  be  shot  at  by  one 
whom  he  has  insulted  or  who  may  have  insulted  him, 
in  a  moment  of  senseless  passion.  The  proposition 
involves  such  contradictions  to  the  moral  reason,  and 
such  obliquity  of  the  moral  sense  as  to  create  amaze¬ 
ment  that  a  public  sentiment  could  have  existed  along 
with  any  degree  of  Christian  civilization,  which  would 
not  only  authorize,  but  compel  a  man,  against  his  will 
and  reason,  to  violate  his  conscience  and  God’s  law 
and  his  sacred  obligations  to  all  of  his  relations  in 
life,  by  taking  revenge  into  his  own  hands.  It  lin¬ 
gered  in  old  England  until  less  than  a  half  a  century 
ago. 

Wilberforce  sought  the  council  of  the  Duke  of 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


113 


Wellington  and  urged  him  to  use  his  vast  influence 
with  the  nation  and  in  Parliament  to  suppress  duelling 
by  law.  The  duke,  after  a  moment  of  silence,  replied 
“Yes,  it  is  a  relic  of  barbarism,  Mr.  Wilberforce,  a 
relic  of  barbarism !  ”  and  that  is  all  the  duke  ever  said 
or  did,  and  the  measure  failed.  It  was  years  after¬ 
wards  when  several  conspicuous  combats  upon  the 
field  of  honor  put  an  end  to  the  barbarous  custom 
by  making  duelling  a  penal  offense.  W  ellington 
saw  the  wrong  "with  his  logical  reason  j  but  the 
mere  logical  philosopher  hits  the  truth,  but  never 
grasps  it,  and  it  never  grasps  him.  In  the  sense 
of  the  Yew  Testament,  he  has  no  convictions, 
no  real  belief.  Therefore  he  has  no  character  for 
action,  no  spring  of  motives  to  set  the  machinery 
to  work. 

Government  in  nations  and  communities  depends 
upon  the  character  of  those  to  whom  it  is  confided, 
and  character  depends  upon  the  rational  faith  in  prin¬ 
ciples.  If  it  is  government  by  the  people,  it  depends 
upon  the  character  of  the  people,  the  right  and  the 
wrong  they  recognize  in  their  consciences,  and  believe 
with  their  faith.  An  ideal  government  can  only  exist 
in  an  ideal  community.  Representative  institutions 
are  doubtless  best  adapted  for  expressing  the  char¬ 
acter  of  the  people,  and  if  we  have  a  people  with 
public  spirit  and  fidelity  in  public  service,  and 
with  reasoning  capacity  to  form  sound  judgments 


114 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


upon  great  questions  of  public  policy,  we  have  the 
best  kind  of  government.  But  with  a  people  in 
whom  these  qualities  are  wanting,  and  who  have 
no  faith  in  principle,  and  no  intelligent  conception 
of  the  meaning  of  government,  confusion  and  cor¬ 
ruption  inevitably  follow.  Whatever  the  abstract 
principle,  the  ideal  conception  of  your  government, 
imperious  necessity  will  modify  or  remove  it  for 
another  kind  of  government  adapted  to  the  people 
who  are  under  it.  Laws  that  are  above  the  moral 
convictions  of  the  people  may  be  educative  in  their 
influence  as  an  appeal  to  duty  and  to  conscience,  but 
if  they  are  ineffective  and  systematically  evaded,  as 
they  will  be,  the  degradation  to  law  by  its  violation 
with  impunity  will  do  more  harm  than  the  supposed 
educative  influence  of  the  ideal  contained  in  it  will  do 
good.  You  cannot  enforce  a  law  against  theft  if  the 
conscience  of  a  community  does  not  condemn  theft. 
You  may  do  it  in  the  case  of  the  petty  thief ;  but  the 
educated  scientific  thief  who  steals  the  property  of  the 
public,  or  of  the  individual  under  cover  of  legal  forms, 
will  have  perfect  immunity,  and  will  maintain  his 
position  in  social  and  public  life  where  the  conscience 
of  the  people  has  been  depraved  by  custom  and  greed, 
and  by  the  worship  of  what  is  called  success. 

If  government  is  a  divine  institution,  taxpaying 
must  be  a  religious  duty,  but  no  law  can  be  framed 
which  will  protect  government  against  false  returns 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


115 


of  property  to  tax  commissioners.  Duty  to  conscience 
and  to  the  unseen  ruler  and  judge  of  conscience,  alone 
can  secure  obedience  and  loyalty  to  government.  Ho 
matter  how  unjust  we  may  consider  the  demand,  as 
long  as  the  law  is  over  us,  no  honest  man  in  the  sight 
of  God  can  fail  to  return  every  penny  of  his  income. 

The  agitation  so  widespread  in  state  and  in  Church 
concerning  the  laws  of  divorce,  is  in  its  ultimate 
analysis,  a  question  of  religious  faith.  Is  marriage  a 
divine  institution,  or  is  it  a  creation  of  human  in¬ 
stincts  ?  Is  it  an  ordinance  of  the  world  and  the 
flesh  ?  Has  it  no  spiritual  and  eternal  sanctions  ?  If 
the  latter  is  the  sentiment  of  the  community,  as  it  is 
in  many  examples  in  nominally  Christian  lands,  then 
men  in  brutal  lust  and  women  in  sinful  passion  and 
vanity,  will  continue  to  scoff  at  the  sacredness  and 
permanence  of  marriage.  Change  the  people  by  the 
power  of  the  Christian  faith  in  the  sanctions  of  the 
unseen  and  the  eternal  laws  of  God,  and  you  will 
change  their  laws.  A  law  is  dead  until  it  has  reason 
and  faith  and  the  character  produced  by  their  combi¬ 
nation  as  its  unseen  foundation. 

As  a  final  element  in  the  discussion  let  us  turn  to 
the  history  and  the  experience  of  the  Christian  Church 
viewed  in  the  light  of  this  principle. 

In  the  conflict  with  paganism  and  gnostic  heresies 
in  the  second  century,  when  the  Church  was  fighting 
for  its  life  as  it  never  had  done  before,  and  certainly 


116 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


never  since,  it  is  simply  incredible  that  it  could  have 
survived,  except  upon  the  assumption  that  Christianity 
was  what  it  claimed  to  be,  and  that  the  common 
sense,  the  judgment,  the  reasonable  faith  of  mankind 
recognized  it  as  such.  The  needs  of  the  human  heart, 
the  light  of  reason  and  that  feeling  of  the  unseen, 
which  we  call  faith,  only  these,  under  the  guidance  of 
Christ  and  His  spirit,  can  account  for  the  survival  of 
Christianity. 

It  is  strange  that  Gibbon  with  his  five  causes  for 
the  wonderful  spread  of  Christianity,  could  have 
missed  the  real  cause,  of  which  the  five  causes  which 
he  alleges  were  only  the  effects.  It  is  as  if  in  discuss¬ 
ing  the  cause  of  any  great  historical  movement,  or 
the  principle  of  a  scientific  discovery,  we  should  de¬ 
scribe  the  phenomena,  the  external  appearance,  the 
effects  produced  without  a  single  allusion  to  the  force, 
the  unseen  power  which  alone  can  furnish  a  solution 
of  the  problem.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
Gibbon  to  look  into  Christianity  itself  for  the  cause 
of  its  triumph  over  paganism.  He  assumes  that 
Christianity,  so  far  as  truth  is  concerned,  is  on  a  level 
with  paganism,  and  therefore  in  assigning  the  reasons 
why  paganism  went  down  before  it,  he  is  driven  to 
the  region  of  conjecture  and  leaves  out  the  facts  of 
the  case.  The  reason  is  that  the  spiritual  revelation 
of  the  Gospel  and  the  facts  upon  which  they  were 
based  never  reached  Gibbon’s  mind.  They  never  got 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


117 


anywhere  near  to  his  heart.  He  had  no  sympathy 
with  them  and  he  did  not  believe  them.  There  is 
such  a  thing  as  the  heart  being  opened  to  attend  to 
things,  which  otherwise  it  passes  by.  Lydia  would 
have  listened  to  Paul  and  gone  on  her  way,  but  there 
was  a  formation  of  mind,  a  disposition  which  we 
might  call  a  reasonable  faith,  as  there  is  in  the  germ 
in  thousands  of  souls,  planted  by  the  spirit  of  God, 
and  she  attended  unto  the  things  which  were  said  by 
Paul.  Gibbon’s  mind  was  blocked  by  presuppositions 
against  Christianity,  and  he  missed  the  key  to  the 
problem. 

Why  is  it  that  the  pagan  world  would  not  listen  to 
the  tremendous  attack  of  Celsus  upon  Christianity  ? 
The  odds  were  against  the  Christians  in  the  laws,  the 
sentiments,  the  institutions,  the  atmosphere  of  the  re¬ 
ligious,  the  secular  and  the  national  life.  Celsus  was 
defending  them  against  their  own  enemies,  and  yet  the 
history  of  that  generation,  a.  d.  160,  has  no  notice  of 
his  great  work.  It  produced  hardly  a  ripple  upon 
the  surface.  Celsus  approached  Christianity  upon  the 
ground  which  in  some  respects  is  identical  with  the 
positions  of  modern  adversaries.  He  denied  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  a  revelation,  and  poured  contempt  upon  the 
idea  of  incarnation  and  miracle,  and  propounded  the 
view  of  the  world  as  bound  by  law  under  the  iron 
rule  of  necessity.  From  this  point  of  view  the  whole 
of  Christianity  is  swept  out  as  an  impossibility.  The 


118 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


reason  for  his  failure  to  find  a  lodgment  for  his 
argument  in  the  pagan  mind  of  his  own  generation, 
was  the  same  as  that  which  has  decided  the  issue 
in  all  controversies  in  which  the  Christian  religion 
has  been  attacked.  It  is  the  argument  which  the 
natural  reason  of  mankind  presents  instinctively 
against  the  destructive  criticism  of  religion.  Celsus 
pulled  down  all  religion  in  his  effort  to  destroy  Chris¬ 
tianity,  and  in  one  way  or  another  it  is  the  outcome 
of  all  sceptical  systems.  They  have  nothing  to  give 
us  in  the  place  of  that  which  they  take  away  from  us. 
Instead  of  beliefs  they  feed  us  with  denials.  Instead 
of  bread  they  give  us  a  stone.  The  common  sense, 
the  judgment,  as  well  as  the  hunger  of  the  heart,  turn 
away  from  negations.  How  can  they  live  in  the  faith 
of  mankind  ?  By  their  own  confession  they  are  dead, 
and  we  are  living,  feeling,  thinking,  suffering,  strug¬ 
gling.  How  can  they  help  us  ? 

My  religion  gives  me  a  Father  who  loves  me,  a  God 
who  has  humanity  in  His  very  nature,  and  a  Son  who 
reveals  that  humanity  and  shares  my  lot  and  dies  to 
save  me.  It  satisfies  the  needs  of  my  heart.  It 
answers  and  fulfils  the  presuppositions  of  my  reason. 
This  is  the  ultimate  reason  why  no  weapon  against  it 
can  prosper  in  the  long  run. 

The  controversy  with  Gnosticism  involved  the  very 
foundations  of  the  Christian  faith.  It  opened  the  last 
part  of  the  first  century;  it  grew  to  threatening 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


119 


dimensions  in  the  second ;  it  perished  at  the  beginning 
of  the  third,  and  left  only  a  few  faint  traces  upon  the 
life  of  the  Christian  world.  Gnosticism  attacked  the 
Incarnation,  the  miracles,  the  Virgin  birth,  the  death, 
the  resurrection  and  resolved  them,  either  into  alle¬ 
gories  or  into  myths,  creations  of  mystical  enthusiasts 
of  an  after  age.  A  brilliant  professor  in  Germany 
leads  the  Gnostic  thinkers  of  to-day.  We  read  their 
books  as  we  listen  to  a  visionary  talker,  or  the  “  Idle 
singer  of  an  empty  day.”  Their  conception  vacates 
Christianity,  and  with  it  the  earnestness  and  meaning 
of  life.  Ileason  and  faith  relegate  it  to  the  visions  of 
a  bygone  century,  originating  in  the  first  contact  of 
the  wonderful  revelations  of  the  Gospel  with  minds 
trained  in  a  brilliant  but  crude  philosophy,  whose 
truths  Christianity  has  taken  up  into  its  higher  truth ; 
whose  fancies  and  errors  it  has  forever  dissipated  by 
that  practical  and  reasonable  faith,  which  it  has  infused 
into  the  ideas  and  the  education  of  mankind. 

Again,  the  Christian  Church  has  experienced  trials 
in  connections  with  its  functions  as  a  guide  and  a 
spiritual  educator  of  its  children,  which  have  involved 
agitation  and  dangers  to  faith  parallel  to  those  attend¬ 
ing  the  great  doctrinal  controversies  to  which  we  have 
referred. 

One  of  these  is  the  prolonged  controversy  between 
the  advance  of  knowledge  in  the  modern  world  and 
the  verbal  infallibility  of  the  Bible  which  held  undis- 


120 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


turbed  and  unquestioned  possession  of  the  Church 
until  the  sixteenth  century. 

Language  is  our  vehicle  for  thought,  and  words  are 
for  the  most  part  constructed  of  images  and  analogies 
from  the  world  of  sense  and  material  things.  The 
instrument  of  our  thought  is  thus  pictorial  and 
metaphorical.  Our  mental  tendency,  especially  in  the 
early  stages  of  development,  is  to  identify  the  instru¬ 
ment  with  the  thought,  the  vehicle  with  the  idea  that 
it  carries,  the  picture  with  the  spirit  which  it  expresses. 
In  some  instances  our  spiritual  consciousness  so  far 
transcends  the  material  form  in  which  the  idea  is 
expressed  as  to  realize  the  thought  without  thinking 
of  the  vehicle.  The  word  spirit,  as  a  distinguished 
philosopher  has  pointed  out,1  is  an  example  of  an  effort 
to  depict  that  which  is  above  sense  by  the  aid  of  that 
wThich  in  the  world  of  sense  is  most  impalpable  and 
ethereal ;  and  even  a  child’s  mind  will  hardly  pause 
on  the  material  significance  of  the  wrord  in  its 
immediate  apprehension  of  the  ideal  meaning,  as 
something  above  sense  and  separated  by  an  infinite 
gulf  from  matter. 

Yet  it  is  true  that  all  ordinary  thought  tends  to 
identify  itself  with  the  outward  form  in  vrhich  it  is 
clothed  ;  that  is,  to  be  literal  and  verbal. 

Plato,  as  summarized  by  Professor  Caird,  says  in  his 
Republic  that  mankind  in  their  childhood  are  incapable 

1  Principal  Caird,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  172. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


121 


of  grasping  an  idea  unless  conveyed  to  them  in  a 
symbol,  which  even  as  interpreted  by  feeling,  may 
suggest,  but  cannot  fully  express  it — “  Doubts  and 
unbelief  in  the  facts  to  which  a  Divine  meaning  has 
been  attached,  must  inevitably  arise,  and  at  first  it 
will  seem  impossible  to  separate  the  ideas  from  the 
vehicle  through  which  they  were  given.  The  maxims 
of  our  supposed  parents  will  lose  their  authority,  when 
it  is  discovered  that  we  have  been  obeying  them  under 
an  illusion,  and  that  we  are  not  really  their  children. 

“  The  whole  religious  view  of  life,  with  all  that  is 
based  upon  it,  will  seem  to  be  discredited  when  the 
outward  form  through  which  it  came  to  us  can  no 
longer  be  taken  to  be  exactly  and  literally  true.”1 
Plato  therefore  recommends  that  the  reflective,  ques¬ 
tioning  activity  should  not  be  awakened  in  youth  until 
the  moral  development  is  considerably  advanced. 
“Young  men,”  he  says,  “prematurely  excited  to 
question  received  authority,  are  like  puppy  dogs  that 
tear  everything  to  pieces.”2  Hence  he  thinks  that  the 
time  for  them  to  receive  the  higher  truth  which  may 
seem  to  transcend  or  to  contradict  the  old  forms  in 
which  they  have  received  it,  should  be  postponed  until 
there  is  developed  in  them  that  common  sense  which 
will  enable  them  to  bear  the  shocks  of  reflection  with¬ 
out  losing  their  faith. 

1  Ed.  Caird,  Evolution  of  Religion,  vol.  1,  p.  300. 

2  Plato,  Republic. 


122 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Plato’s  words  are  illustrated  in  the  universal  decay 
of  heathen  faiths  and  forms  of  religion  with  the 
advance  of  material  civilization  in  the  old  world. 
They  are  significant  to  the  Christian  Church  as 
interpreting  the  meaning  of  some  of  the  tribulations 
and  controversies  through  which  she  has  passed.  She 
has  emerged  from  them  stronger  than  before,  with  the 
spiritual  authority  of  the  Bible,  not  only  unshaken, 
but  immeasurably  strengthened  by  the  growth  in  the 
spiritual  intelligence  which  each  generation  brings  to 
its  interpretation. 

The  first  contact  of  the  revelations  of  science  with 
the  Church  occurred  in  the  latter  years  of  the  six¬ 
teenth  century.  We  may  see  illustrated  in  that  con¬ 
troversy  how  the  reasonable  faith  educated  in  the 
mind  of  Christianity  chastens  and  spiritualizes  the 
earlier  faith  of  feeling  and  of  objective  form,  so  that 
the  spirit  is  seen  through  the  letter,  and  the  revelation 
of  truth  is  seen  through  the  form  in  which  the  truth 
is  conveyed. 

Galileo  during  the  last  years  of  the  sixteenth  century 
enlarged  the  realm  of  human  knowledge  by  dis¬ 
coveries  as  wonderful,  as  the  proof  of  them  was  con¬ 
clusive.  The  first  opposition  he  encountered  was 
from  the  professors  of  the  universities  who  feared 
that  if  the  new  science  should  gain  a  foothold,  their 
occupation  would  be  gone  and  their  chairs  vacated. 
The  opposition  extended  to  the  church.  The  con- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


123 


tradiction  of  the  new  science  to  the  cosmogony  in 
Genesis,  as  literally  interpreted,  was  agitated  with 
fanatical  intensity.  IIow  could  we  believe  the 
Scripture  which  represents  this  earth  of  ours  as  the 
first  creative  work,  and  after  it  the  sun  was  placed  in 
the  vault  of  heaven  to  rule  the  day,  and  the  moon  and 
stars  to  give  light  by  night,  if  we  accept  Galileo’s 
doctrine  of  our  world,  as  only  one  of  the  smaller 
bodies  moving  around  the  sun  ?  Does  not  the 
Scripture  represent  the  sun  as  a  “  bridegroom  coming 
out  of  his  chamber  and  rejoicing  as  a  strong  man  to 
run  a  race  ?  His  going  forth  is  from  the  end  of  the 
heaven  and  his  circuit  unto  the  ends  of  it.”  Is  it  pos¬ 
sible  that  this  earth  should  be  only  one  of  the  smaller 
worlds  and  yet  be  selected  by  God  as  the  scene  of  the 
Incarnation  and  of  the  drama  of  Redemption  ? 

The  rash  thinker  who  overturns  the  faith  in  the 
Bible  must  be  dealt  with  by  the  courts  of  the  Church. 
Galileo  is  condemned  for  heresy  and  given  the  choice 
between  recantation  and  temporal  penalties.  He  was 
never  tortured,  and  the  romance  of  his  exclamation 
after  torture  referring  to  the  motion  of  the  earth 
“  It  still  moves,”  is  an  invention  of  the  enemies  of  the 
then  church,  and  kept  alive  to  this  day  by  a  class  of 
scientists  and  by  ignorant  schoolbooks  which  inocu¬ 
late  our  children  with  the  conception  of  a  fatal 
antagonism  between  religion  and  science. 

Three  centuries  have  passed  away  and  the  rea- 


124: 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


sonable  faith  of  the  Christian  world  has  long  ago 
settled  the  question  that  astronomical  theories  have 
no  connections  with  Christian  morality  or  Christian 
doctrine ;  that  for  the  Church  to  undertake  to  legis¬ 
late  for  and  govern  the  universe  is  transcending  the 
province  of  her  divinely  ordained  function ;  that 
Christianity  has  enough  real  sins  to  battle  with  in  this 
world  of  fallen  men,  and  that  to  go  out  of  its  way  to 
create  artificial  sins  in  condemning  opinions  which 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  fundamentals  of  its  faith, 
such  as  physical  facts,  is  to  extend  its  province  into  a 
region  which  has  not  been  assigned  to  its  keeping. 
All  students  of  the  Bible,  Protestants  and  Romanists, 
have  long  ago  accepted  the  doctrine  of  Galileo  that 
the  Earth  revolves  around  the  sun,  and  at  the  same 
time  they  hold  with  reverent  faith  the  inspiration  of 
the  story  of  the  creation  in  Genesis. 

Science  itself  has  contributed  to  our  conception  of 
the  dignity  and  the  majesty  of  the  picture  therein 
presented,  and  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  lessons  it  is 
designed  to  convey.  iNor  is  it  conceivable  that  any 
intelligent  scientific  man  in  this  latest  generation 
would  suggest  an  alteration  in  the  form  of  the 
narrative.  The  sun  is  described  as  rising  and  setting, 
and  will  be  so  described  as  long  as  language  is  the 
vehicle  of  ideas,  although  it  is  directly  the  opposite  of 
the  truth.  Yet  it  is  the  visible  appearance,  it  is  the 
practical  reality,  so  far  as  we  on  this  earth  are  con- 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


125 


cerned,  and  always  will  be.  The  knowledge  of  the 
scientific  fact  can  never  supersede  the  expression  we 
use,  and  always  will  use  for  the  phenomena.  The 
child  and  the  philosopher  are  content  to  rest  the 
controversy  there. 

The  inferiority  of  this  earth  in  magnitude  to  in¬ 
numerable  worlds  in  space,  is  no  longer  a  reasonable 
argument  against  the  gospel  revelation  of  the  Son  of 
God  becoming  incarnate,  dying  upon  a  cross,  and 
rising  from  the  dead  for  the  salvation  of  a  family  of 
God’s  lost  children.  Upon  the  assumption  of  revela¬ 
tion  that  we  are  made  in  the  image  of  God  with  a 
spiritual  nature  and  an  immortal  destiny,  the  worth 
of  a  single  soul  is  incommensurable  with  an  infinite 
magnitude  of  matter. 

This  controversy  between  the  interpreters  of  the 
Bible  and  astronomy  centuries  ago,  contains  a  lesson 
for  the  Church  and  for  intelligent  Christians  for  each 
succeeding  age.  The  conflicts  of  the  past  have  left 
the  Bible,  not  only  unharmed,  but  have  been  over¬ 
ruled  as  a  means  for  widening  its  circulation  and 
deepening  the  foundations  of  its  hold  upon  man¬ 
kind. 

The  revelation  contained  in  the  Bible  has  never 
been  in  peril.  The  battle  has  been  fought  over  its 
interpretation.  The  defenders  of  revelation  have 
identified  it  with  their  interpretation  of  the  words  in 
which  it  is  conveyed,  and  have  contended  that  the 


126 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


Bible  stands  or  falls  with  their  conception  of  its 
meaning. 

It  has  been  said  with  much  truth  in  this  connection 
“  there  is  a  serious  risk,  if  the  mind  be  fastened  on 
things  external  in  some  way  connected  with,  but  yet 
distinct  from,  the  substance  of  revelation,  it  may  turn 
out  that  these  external  things  cannot  hold  the  ground 
on  which  they  have  been  placed.  They  have  to  be 
given  up  by  force  at  last,  when  they  ought  to  have 
been  given  up  long  before.  And  when  given  up, 
they  too  often  tear  away  with  them  a  part  of  the 
strength  of  that  faith  of  which  they  had  previously 
been,  not  only  the  buttress  outside,  but  a  part  of  the 
living  framework.”  The  same  writer  says  with  much 
wisdom,  “  It  is  intended  that  as  men  advance  in 
knowledge  of  God’s  works,  and  in  the  power  of  hand¬ 
ling  that  knowledge,  they  should  find  themselves 
better  able  to  interpret  the  message  which  they  have 
received  from  their  Father  in  heaven.  Our  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  true  meaning  of  the  Bible  has  gained,  and 
it  was  intended  that  it  should  gain,  by  the  increase  of 
other  knowledge.  Science  makes  clearer  than  any¬ 
thing  else  could  have  made  it,  the  higher  level  on 
which  the  Bible  puts  what  is  spiritual  over  what  is 
material.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  ascribe  to  science  a 
clearer  knowledge  of  the  true  interpretation  of  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis,  and  to  scientific  history  a 
truer  knowledge  of  the  great  historical  prophets. 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


127 


The  advance  of  secular  studies,  as  they  are  called, 
clears  up  much  in  the  Psalms  and  much  in  other  po¬ 
etical  hooks  of  Scripture.  I  cannot  doubt  that  this 
was  intended  from  the  beginning,  and  that  as  science 
has  already  done  genuine  service  to  religion  in  this 
way,  so  will  it  do  still  better  service  with  the  process 
of  time.”  1 

These  words  are  from  the  Bampton  lectures  for 
IS  SI,  by  the  Rt.  Rev.  Frederick  Temple,  the  present 
Primate  of  England.  I  would  commend  this  book 
upon  “Religion  and  Science”  to  all  students  for 
the  ministry. 

After  reading,  as  I  have  tried  to  do  with  a  fair 
mind,  what  has  been  said  on  the  other  side,  produc¬ 
tions  of  literary  ability  from  the  English  press  and 
publications  from  our  own,  such  as  Draper’s  “  Con¬ 
flict  of  Religion  and  Science  ”  some  years  ago,  and 
more  recently  an  elaborate,  painstaking  volume  from 
a  professor  of  one  of  our  western  universities  (the 
latter  books  I  confess  with  some  pain  at  the  hostility 
to  Christianity  which  they  exhibited,  and  the  use  of 
arguments  which  scholarly  minds  ought  long  ago  to 
have  abandoned),  I  find  refreshment,  not  only  in  the 
great  literary  merits,  but  also  in  the  broad  sympathies, 
the  reasonable  faith  and  the  wise  moderation  which 
characterize  this  contribution  to  the  discussion  of  the 
relations  between  religion  and  science. 

1  Bampton  Lectures,  1884,  pp.  244,  etc. 


128 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


In  this  generation  of  disputation  upon  sacred  veri¬ 
ties,  not  only  among  scholars  but  in  the  popular  mind, 
accompanied  as  it  is  with  crudities  of  ignorance  and 
the  use  of  arguments  which  one  would  suppose  ordi¬ 
nary  education  would  have  refuted,  we  need  the  pa¬ 
tience  of  a  reasonable  faith.  "We,  who  touch  the 
people,  need  caution  against  the  formation  of  pre¬ 
cipitate  judgments,  and  taking  up  opinions  upon  sub¬ 
jects  where  the  investigation  of  facts  necessary  for 
the  solution  of  questions,  is  yet  in  its  infancy. 

We  need  above  all  the  spiritual  temper,  for  if  there 
is  one  law  of  Christianity  revealed  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  more  clearly  reasonable  than  another  it  is  that 
“  the  things  of  the  spirit  are  spiritually  discerned.” 

"What  is  faith  ?  Not  in  its  psychological  definition, 
not  in  its  action  in  the  Church,  or  in  the  fields  of 
history,  but  what  is  it  in  my  personal  life?  How 
does  it  connect  me  with  God  and  with  Christ  ?  How 
do  we  get  faith  ?  The  answer  is,  in  our  personal  ex¬ 
perience  we  come  to  faith  first  and  reason  afterwards. 
Faith  is  an  act.  It  is  a  step  forward,  and  we  must 
take  the  step.  It  is  a  venture  of  the  whole  nature. 
It  is  a  capacity  planted  in  us,  but  it  will  not  take  care 
of  itself.  It  will  not  maintain  its  own  life  unless  we 
adopt  the  means  and  follow  the  rules  of  its  life. 
Faith  is  first  obedience,  submission.  As  such  it  is  a 
trial.  It  goes  against  our  sinful  nature.  But  it  must 
be  borne.  It  is  God’s  way  of  sifting  us,  of  breaking 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


129 


the  wilfulness  in  our  hearts  and  clearing  out  the  litter 
of  doubts  in  our  minds. 

As  by  faith  we  submit  and  enter  the  path  of  obedi¬ 
ence  we  begin  to  know.  “  He  that  doeth  the  will  of 
God  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.”  The  first  great 
truth  that  dawns  upon  us  is  our  dependence  for  help  to 
obey.  That  opens  to  the  vision  of  our  faith  the  pro¬ 
vision  of  grace  in  Christ,  the  meaning  of  the  New 
Testament  that  we  must  be  born  from  above.  We 
cry,  all  of  us  cry  when  we  realize  that  knowledge, 
“  Lord  I  believe,  help  Thou  mine  unbelief !  ”  How 
reasonable  it  is.  Each  step  of  faith  brings  its  proof 
of  reason  to  justify  it.  Each  duty  we  do  in  obedience 
to  command  gives  us  the  assurance  that  we  are  on  the 
right  path.  It  is  as  when  we  go  to  a  school  or  an 
university  in  our  early  days,  we  assume  that  we  will 
get  the  knowledge  there  of  which  we  are  ignorant, 
and  that  the  way  to  get  it  is  to  use  the  means.  We 
may  not  be  intellectually  certain,  we  may  have  doubts 
about  many  things  in  religion  or  see  them  only  dimly. 
We  will  be  like  travelers  who  many  times  all  the 
world  over  go  out  not  knowing  whither  they  go,  but 
only  keep  going.  Duty,  submission,  obeying  the  rules 
that  God  has  laid  down,  that  is  the  pathway  of  faith 
and  after  faith  knowledge.  God  does  not  reveal 
Himself  to  the  idle  gaze  of  curiosity,  or  to  the  mind 
that  thinks  itself  big  enough  to  weigh  Him  in  its  bal¬ 
ances.  Irreverence  cannot  see  God.  “  The  secret  of 


130 


FAITH  AND  REASON 


the  Lord  is  with  them  that  fear  Him ;  ”  and  fear  means 
the  faith  of  obedience,  the  venture  of  trust.  So  the 
humble  pathway  of  faith  comes  to  reason,  and 
reason  goes  back  to  strengthen  faith  for  new  journeys, 
and  to  kindle  its  eye  with  a  new  hope.  What  won¬ 
derful  gifts  of  God  in  Christ  for  our  salvation  here, 
and  for  our  unending  growth  in  knowledge,  and  in 
love,  in  life  everlasting  ! 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


LECTUEE  IV 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 

Authority  in  religion  suggests  the  controversy  between  the  mediaeval 
and  modern  world.  The  reformation  produced  by  opposing 
principles  in  conception  of  authority  of  the  Church  and  rights  of 
reason  and  conscience.  To  attribute  perfection  to  work  of  the 
reformation  an  optimistic  illusion.  Revulsion  against  objective 
religion  tends  to  exaggeration  of  subjective  religion.  Examples 
from  reformed  churches.  Distinctive  characteristics  of  English 
reformation.  Authority  in  relation  to  interpretation  of  Bible. 
Is  authority  antagonistic  to  reason  ?  Authority  in  childhood  and 
from  hereditary  transmission  natural,  therefore  reasonable.  Un¬ 
conscious  influence.  Authority  the  sum  of  influences  moulding 
us  from  without.  No  conflict  between  reason  and  authority. 
Authority  at  every  stage  associated  with  reason  as  its  support. 
Authority  requiring  blind  submission  undermines  its  own  foun¬ 
dations.  What  is  education?  Mr.  Balfour’s  “Foundation  of 
Belief.”  He  represents  reason  as  enemy  and  rival  of  authority. 
Attacks  popular  conception  of  rights  of  reason.  Fails  to  define 
the  reason  which  he  considers  antagonistic  to  authority.  Author¬ 
ity  when  challenged  appeals  to  reason.  Church  of  Rome  appeals 
to  reason  in  support  of  authority  wThen  attacked.  Mr.  Balfour 
says  we  owe  to  authority,  rather  than  reason,  religion,  ethics  and 
politics.  Refutation.  Old  authorities  discredited  by  advance  of 
knowledge.  Analysis  of  psychological  climates.  Their  author¬ 
ity.  Public  opinion  not  like  a  law  of  nature.  Depends  upon 
character  of  people.  Examples  in  families  and  nation.  Thomas 
Jefferson  on  the  strength  of  a  nation.  Authority,  divorced  from 
reason,  the  ally  of  superstition.  The  craving  for  infallibility  in 
religion.  Infallibility  in  the  Roman  Church.  Dr.  Hort’s 
“Christian  Ecclesia.”  Authority  rests  upon  rational  convictions 
and  revelation.  Historic  faith. 

In  the  previous  lectures  we  have  endeavored  to 

133 


134 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


illustrate  the  principle  that  it  is  thought  and  the  moral 
reason  including  faith,  which  are  the  organs  for  ap¬ 
prehending  objective  truth.  Feeling  is  in  itself  purely 
subjective.  It  may  be  kindled  by  imaginations  that 
have  no  objective  reality ;  or  it  may  be  the  result  of 
a  process  of  self-excitation  familiar  among  the  relig¬ 
ious  illusions,  which,  in  the  experience  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Church,  have  turned  out  to  be  devoid  of  per¬ 
manent  results,  and  tending  to  superstition  and 
self-deception.  The  character  and  the  worth  of  feel¬ 
ing  are  to  be  measured  by  the  objective  truth  which 
the  feeling  contains  as  its  origin  and  its  reason.  Thus 
we  have  seen  that  reason,  faith  and  feeling  are  coordi¬ 
nate  in  Christian  beliefs. 

We  are  now  to  consider  the  relation  of  religious 
belief  to  authority.  The  word  suggests  to  the  popu¬ 
lar  mind  a  stormy  tract  of  history  extending  over  the 
sixteenth  century,  dividing  the  forms  and  the  ecclesi¬ 
astical  organisms  of  the  mediaeval  and  the  modern 
world. 

The  reformation  breaks  the  history  of  Christianity 
into  two  periods,  which  are  mainly  distinguished  by 
directly  opposing  principles  in  relation  to  the  author¬ 
ity  of  the  Church  and  the  rights  of  reason  and  con¬ 
science.  Before  the  reformation  the  Church  had 
developed,  in  the  growth  of  centuries,  a  spiritual 
monarchy  which  claimed  and  exercised  discipline  and 
authority  over  every  sphere  of  human  life.  By  the 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


135 


reformation  the  unity  of  organization  was  broken, 
and  with  it  the  machinery  and  the  forces  for  the  re¬ 
pression  of  the  spirit  of  liberty.  Before,  the  Church 
practically  controlled  the  family,  the  state,  the  indi¬ 
vidual  ;  and  its  authority  prescribed  the  science,  the 
philosophy  and  the  secular  knowledge,  as  well  as 
religious  doctrine  and  discipline.  Belief  was  a  law 
imposed  from  without,  repudiating  any  conception  of 
the  rights  of  critical  intelligence  and  of  personal  re¬ 
sponsibility.  By  the  reformation  the  doors  of  the 
close  corporation  of  the  ecclesiastical  organism  were 
broken  down.  Thought  and  religion  were  left  free 
to  the  open  air,  and  reason  and  faith  resumed  their 
functions  in  the  act  and  the  responsibility  of  belief. 
The  family  and  the  state  reasserted  themselves,  as 
divine  institutions,  and  not  the  creatures  of  the 
Church.  Christianity  is  conceived  of,  not  as  a  law,  a 
visible  organism  to  govern  by  visible  sanctions  super¬ 
seding  all  other  authorities,  but  as  a  spirit  entering 
into  human  nature  and  redeeming  it  from  the  power 
of  evil,  and  thus  regenerating  all  of  its  relations.  It 
is  designed  not  to  repress,  but  to  sanction  and  to 
bless  all  of  God’s  ordinances  for  human  life ;  to  re¬ 
store  marriage  from  the  dominion  of  animal  passions 
to  the  dignity  and  the  purity  of  its  primeval  institu¬ 
tion  ;  to  redeem  government  from  the  absolutism  of 
brute  force  to  the  loyalty  and  the  love  of  its  subjects 
as  an  ordinance  of  God ;  not  to  kill  nature  and  natural 


136 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


tendencies,  but  through  them  and  in  the  life  that  they 
involved,  to  redeem  human  nature  by  the  regener¬ 
ating  grace  of  Christ.  Thus  the  reformation  was  a 
return  to  the  ideas  of  the  New  Testament,  which 
had  been  practically  suppressed  by  the  abnormal 
growth  of  external  authority  in  the  mediseval  forms 
of  Christianity,  and  which  had  been  lost  sight  of 
for  long  centuries  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  placed 
history  on  a  new  basis.  It  amounted  practically 
to  a  reproclamation  of  great  Christian  ideas ;  the 
essential  spiritual  equality  of  men  in  their  equal 
nearness  to  God ;  the  single  mediatorship  of  Christ 
between  God  and  man ;  the  truth  that  there  is 
nothing  common  or  unclean  in  human  life,  or  nature 
as  God  has  ordained  it,  and  that  the  redeeming  grace 
in  Christ  is  a  grace  sufficient  to  bring  us  off  more 
than  conquerors  in  the  antagonisms  and  conflicts  of 
life  and  in  the  last  trial  of  death. 

But  to  attribute  perfection  to  the  whole  movement 
of  the  reformation  is  only  an  optimistic  illusion.  It 
has  its  strength,  but  with  human  nature,  newborn 
strength  is  close  to  weakness.  The  impulse  to  throw 
off  authority,  when  conceived  of  as  a  usurpation  of 
the  rights  of  private  judgment,  easily  develops  into 
a  delusion  which  regards  all  authority  as  an 
enemy  of  liberty.  The  recognition  of  rights  and 
ceremonies  and  sacraments  as  devoid  in  themselves 
of  spiritual  power  and  saving  efficacy,  has  in  it  a 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


137 


tendency,  when  unguarded,  to  develop  an  impulse 
to  sweep  away  all  supposed  obstacles  between  the 
individual  soul  and  God.  When  we  part  with  objec¬ 
tive  religion,  by  a  natural  revulsion  we  are  relegated 
to  the  exaggeration  of  subjective  religion.  The 
mediaeval  Church  took  little  or  no  account  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  ;  religion  was  objective,  authoritative  exter- 
nalism.  In  parting  with  it,  the  danger  was  subjective 
individualism.  Both  extremes  neutralize  Christianity. 
The  subjective,  disowning  the  need  of  the  objective, 
the  inward  asserting  not  only  independence  of,  but 
antagonism  to,  the  outward,  is  an  illusion  which 
empties  the  reason  and  faith  of  all  beliefs.  Worship 
yourself,  your  own  subjective  feelings  and  you  are  on 
the  way  to  blank  denial  of  all  religion.  This  is  the 
rock  upon  which  the  extremes  of  the  Protestant  move¬ 
ment  have  been  and  will  be  wrecked. 

The  tendency  to  subjectivism  as  contrasted  with 
the  universality  of  Christianity,  of  narrow  individual¬ 
ism  as  contrasted  with  beliefs  and  creeds  and  prayers 
and  liturgies  acknowledged  by  common  consent  as 
coming  down  from  the  purest  ages  of  faith ;  the 
naming  of  churches  after  the  individual  who  founded 
them  or  who  stamped  his  ideas  of  theology  or  practice 
upon  them,  all  are  extremes  tending  to  error,  even 
along  with  the  holding  of  the  essential  truths  of 
Christianity. 

Luther  gives  the  name  to  Lutheranism,  and  identi- 


138 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


lies  a  great  gospel  with  an  ephemeral  conception  of 
an  abstract  and  incomprehensible  philosophy  of  a 
sacrament.  Upon  the  Calvinistic  Churches  rests  the 
shadow  of  the  great  name  and  the  intellectual  su¬ 
premacy  of  Calvin,  and  through  him,  of  a  theology 
which  may  have  had  uses  in  its  day,  but  must  be  a 
hindrance  and  a  limitation  to  the  great  Church  which 
clings  to  it  in  form,  in  an  age  which  has  passed  it  by. 
For  who  to-day  can  hold  the  doctrine  of  arbitrary 
election  and  reprobation,  by  which  God  is  represented 
as  assigning  some  to  eternal  misery,  and  an  elect  few 
to  eternal  glory,  for  no  reason  but  that  it  is  His  will, 
that  is,  for  no  reason  at  all  ?  What  a  burden  in  this 
monstrous  doctrine  for  a  church  to  bear ! 

We  are  to  thank  God  that  upon  the  English  refor¬ 
mation  there  is  no  mark  of  individualism,  no  narrow¬ 
ness  of  an  ephemeral  system  of  speculative  theology. 
When  a  man  founds  a  new  faith,  his  defects,  his  limi¬ 
tations,  his  errors,  his  idiosyncracies  are  transmitted 
to  the  body  which  he  has  formed  and  handed  down 
with  his  name  as  their  authority.  The  English  refor¬ 
mation  was  preserved  by  the  providence  of  God  from 
the  stamp  of  any  single  mind,  or  of  a  sect  or  coterie. 
The  English  reformers  did  not  try  to  make  a  church 
or  to  evolve  a  theology  out  of  their  own  consciousness. 
Their  aim  was  to  hold  on  to  all  that  was  true  in  the 
old.  They  listened  to  all  that  the  continental  reform¬ 
ers,  who  had  gone  far  beyond  them,  had  to  give. 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


139 


They  judged  and  compared  it  with  the  Scriptures  and 
the  old  history.  They  changed  their  views  oftentimes 
under  the  light  they  sought  from  the  Christianity  of 
the  early  days.  They  excluded  the  accretions  of  su¬ 
perstition  which  had  gathered  upon  the  early  faith, 
holding  to  the  old  order  of  organism,  the  simple 
Sacraments  of  the  New  Testament,  the  early  creeds 
expressing  the  consciousness  and  the  common  consent 
of  the  Church  when  it  was  fighting  the  battles  for  its 
life  and  the  ancient  prayers  through  which  the  old 
faith  expressed  itself.  Thus  they  have  transmitted  to 
our  modern  world  a  reverence  for  reasonable  authority, 
and  a  mediating,  chastening  influence  upon  religious 
extravagance  and  sectarian  bigotry.  They  have  given 
us  a  Church  to  train  our  children  in  the  fear  of  God 
and  in  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  Her  history  an¬ 
swers  the  question  as  to  her  interpretation  of  the 
meaning  of  authority  in  religion  and  its  place  in  the 
Christian  Church. 

Turning  from  the  Church  to  the  Bible  the  idea  of 
authority  is  associated  in  the  minds  of  the  majority 
of  persons,  who  have  only  a  general  acquaintance 
with  biblical  studies,  with  the  claims  of  various 
ecclesiastical  and  theological  parties.  It  presents  a 
picture  of  the  battle  ground  upon  which  new  thoughts 
array  themselves  against  the  old,  new  theologies  as¬ 
sume  the  attitude  of  destructive  criticism  of  the  old, 
and  modern  scholarship,  by  reason  of  its  larger  oppor- 


140 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


tunities  and  its  wider  culture,  claims  the  right  of  the 
possession  of  the  field  of  critical  inquiry  to  the  dis¬ 
credit  and  abandonment  of  the  old.  Even  if  I  felt 
myself  competent  to  the  task  of  entering  such  a  field 
and  attempting  to  conduct  my  hearers  to  the  solution 
of  its  complex  problems,  it  would  be  manifestly  im¬ 
practical  to  do  so. 

The  science  of  theology  has  enlarged  its  area  and 
included  a  wider  range  of  subjects  than  was  dreamed 
of  by  the  elder  theologians,  and  probably  wider  by 
comparison  than  the  natural  sciences  and  the  systems 
of  philosophical  speculation.  Every  church  should 
provide  opportunities  for  special  training  in  complex 
historical  and  critical  problems,  in  connection  with 
the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments  and  the  voluminous 
literature  which  has  grown  up  around  these  ques¬ 
tions;  for  the  study  of  religions  in  relation  to  the 
varied  fields  of  missions ;  for  scientific  and  philosophi¬ 
cal  questions  which  have  a  bearing  upon  theology,  so 
that  Christianity  may  have  competent  thinkers  and 
investigators  in  every  field  of  criticism  and  contro¬ 
versy.  While  this  is  true  in  relation  to  special  work, 
the  general  preparation  for  the  Christian  ministry  for 
the  practical  work  of  the  Church  and  the  conversion 
of  the  world  has  only  time  for  the  principles  and 
results  of  these  various  departments.  It  would  be  the 
abandonment  of  the  greater  work,  if  we  should  at¬ 
tempt  to  associate  with  it  the  ambition  for  complete 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


141 


scholarship  in  any  one  of  these  special  departments 
which,  in  our  modern  life,  have  been  included  within 
the  borders  of  theological  studies. 

After  these  general  considerations  I  will  ask  your 
attention  to  the  theory  of  authority  in  relation  to 
religious  beliefs.  It  is  the  same  aspect  in  which  we 
considered  faith  in  its  relation  to  reason.  Reason  is 
implicit  in  faith.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  true 
faith  as  unreasonable.  Is  authority  otherwise  ?  Is 
authority  suspicious  of  reason  and  does  reason  regard 
authority  as  the  enemy  of  progress,  and  the  refuge 
for  wrong  and  oppression,  and  the  cover  for  bigotry  ? 
Is  the  history  of  the  controversies  in  the  Christian 
Church,  its  reformations,  its  conservatisms,  its  pro¬ 
gress,  its  retrogressions,  its  failures  and  its  triumphs 
due  to  the  spirit  of  inveterate  antagonism  between 
reason  and  authority?  Writers  of  learning  and  ability 
have  held  this  view  as  a  true  philosophy  of  history,  of 
religion,  of  science,  of  law  and  of  government.  Is 
such  a  theory  tenable  ?  In  the  first  place  is  not 
authority  natural  and  reasonable  ?  Is  it  not  the 
rational  order  of  life  ?  If  so,  how  is  it  thinkable 
that  there  could  exist  a  natural  antagonism  between 
them  as  principles  and  forces  governing  conduct  and 
educating  character  ?  There  are  some  periods  of  life 
where  reason  seems  to  be  entirely  subordinate  to 
authority,  and  yet  where  that  is  the  case,  the  wildest 
social  or  political  theorizer,  in  the  interests  of  indi- 


142 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


vidualistic  conceptions  of  human  rights  and  duties, 
would  admit  the  reason  and  the  necessity  of  authority . 

We  all  agree  that  we  enter  life  under  authority. 
We  are  organically  connected  with  the  past,  and  that 
furnishes  the  conditions  and  the  environment  into 
which  we  are  born.  Neither  in  our  moral  nor  in  our 
physical  history  can  we  be  regarded,  for  a  moment  of 
our  lives,  as  separate  individualities,  living  to  our¬ 
selves,  as  an  aggregate  of  individual  unities  working 
out  our  destiny,  making  our  character,  forming  our 
beliefs  and  taking  care  of  our  bodies  for  and  by  our¬ 
selves.  The  law  of  hereditary  transmission  of  tenden¬ 
cies,  influences  and  possibilities  in  our  physical  organ¬ 
ization,  is  no  longer  a  theory,  but  a  fact  recognized  by 
the  widest  generalizations  from  observation.  Even  in 
our  bodies  we  have  a  past,  which  the  moment  we  are 
born  connects  us  with  the  corporate  life  of  the  race. 
In  the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  the  main  feature 
of  our  destiny  finds  a  philosophical  expression  in  a 
single  antithesis  of  Scripture,  “  For  as  in  Adam  all 
die,  even  so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive.”  Our 
inheritance  from  the  one  is  the  universal  sovereignty 
of  death ;  our  inheritance  from  the  other  is  the  uni¬ 
versal  potentiality  of  life. 

The  principle  of  the  inheritance  of  antecedent  au¬ 
thorities  and  influences  finds  an  illustration,  none  the 
less  vivid  in  our  moral  and  spiritual,  than  in  our 
physical  life.  As  truly  as  we  are  born  into  an  at- 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


143 


mosphere  which,  with  our  first  breath,  awakens  and 
sustains  our  physical  existence  and  sets  the  machinery 
in  motion,  so  is  our  moral  and  spiritual  atmosphere 
provided  for  us  at  the  very  dawn  of  our  conscious 
life.  We  are  under  tutors  and  governors  after  we 
pass  the  years  of  helpless  infancy  and  childhood,  but 
during  those  years  that  lay  back  of  conscious  memory, 
we  were  engaged  in  the  ceaseless  activities  of  a  think¬ 
ing  soul  with  moral  reason.  We  were  learning  and 
laying  foundations  for  every  compartment  of  the 
manifold  building  of  mind  and  of  personality. 

A  mother,  holding  us  in  her  arms,  and  bending  over 
us,  planted  in  us,  in  a  moment  perhaps,  germs  of  truth 
that  lay  there  under  the  ground  below  consciousness 
and  lost  to  memory,  but  containing  in  them  poten¬ 
tialities  of  development  into  spiritual  beliefs,  rational 
judgments  and  moral  feelings,  which  connect  our 
mature  years  with  our  earliest  days,  as  the  stem  and 
the  leaves  and  the  bud  and  the  flower  contain  in 
them,  at  each  stage,  the  organic  life  power  and 
promise  that  was  enfolded  in  the  mystery  of  the  seed 
when  planted  in  the  dark  ground.  Countless  influ¬ 
ences  were  streaming  in  upon  us  before  the  days  of 
positive  teaching  and  of  authoritative  discipline  and 
of  conscious  mental  effort.  We  did  not  make  our 
social  environment ;  we  found  it  here,  an  inheritance 
from  a  past,  how  remote  we  do  not  know.  The  ex¬ 
ample  of  others,  the  look,  the  tone,  the  expression  of 


144 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


countenance,  the  family  life,  the  daily  contact  with 
the  community  and  countless  other  influences  were 
unconsciously  guiding  and  leading  our  susceptibilities 
and  asserting  authority  over  us. 

The  idea  of  unconscious  influence  reminds  us  of  a 
passage  in  Scripture  ;  and  the  Bible,  by  effortless  sug¬ 
gestion,  tells  us  more  of  human  nature  than  all  litera¬ 
ture  and  all  philosophy.  Two  disciples,  John  and 
Peter,  are  hurrying  to  the  sepulchre  on  the  morning 
of  the  resurrection.  The  narrative  says  John  did 
outrun  Peter  but  went  not  in.  Peter  hurries  past 
him  and  enters  the  sepulchre.  “Then  went  in  also 

that  other  disciple - ”  An  example  of  voluntary 

and  spontaneous  response  to  that  spiritual  force  of 
unconscious  influence,  which  accounts  for  so  large  an 
area  of  human  action,  and  which,  through  the  indi¬ 
vidual  conduct,  enters  into  the  corporate  life  of  society 
and  of  the  race  for  good  or  for  evil. 

Authority  then,  understood  as  the  sum  of  the  influ¬ 
ences  outside  of  ourselves,  that  stream  in  upon  us  to 
mould  and  to  guide  and  form  our  opinions,  our  beliefs 
and  our  conduct,  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  part  of  the 
natural  and  the  reasonable  order  of  life.  At  the  same 
time,  this  authority,  or  these  authorities,  are  never 
absolute  in  their  power  or  received  as  infallible,  in 
the  spirit  of  blind  submission,  even  in  the  earliest 
years  of  consciousness.  Eeason  and  conscience  and 
free  will  are  always  present,  even  in  the  elementary 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


145 


stages  of  the  development  of  childhood,  not  to  ques¬ 
tion,  but  to  weigh  and  consider  the  authority  that 
comes  to  us  from  without.  The  child  submits,  but  at 
the  same  time  often  asks  the  reason  for  what  you  tell 
it  to  do,  and  in  the  majority  of  cases  you  find  it  a 
help  to  the  spirit  of  obedience  in  the  child  and  a 
strength  to  your  authority  to  know,  however  imper¬ 
fectly,  some  reason  in  your  command. 

Christian  philosophy  regards  this  fact  of  authority 
over  us  at  the  beginning  of  life  as  the  training  school 
in  the  spirit  of  obedience  which  we  are  to  carry  on 
into  the  years  of  discretion,  the  lifetime  of  conscious 
and  reasonable  responsibility.  That  is  the  philosophy 
of  Christianity,  as  expressed  in  the  doctrine  and  the 
training  of  this  Church,  in  a  form  nearest  to  the  truth 
and  wisest  in  its  practical  application. 

There  is  no  sign  of  a  conflict  in  your  prayer  books 
between  faith  and  reason,  or  again  between  authority 
and  reason.  From  the  catechism  provided  by  the 
Church  for  teaching  our  children  the  foundations  of 
Christian  beliefs  and  conduct,  to  the  prayers  in  the 
offices  for  the  visitation  of  the  sick  and  the  burial  of 
the  dead,  we  have  the  assumption  of  the  coopera¬ 
tion  and  harmony  between  reason  and  authority. 
The  lesson  of  sickness  and  death  is  expressed  in  the 
last  services  of  the  prayer  book  in  words  which  once 
heard  cannot  be  forgotten.  We  pray  that  “when  we 
have  served  God  in  our  day  and  generation,  we  may 


116 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


be  gathered  unto  our  fathers,  having  the  testimony  of 
a  good  conscience,  in  the  communion  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  in  the  confidence  of  a  certain  faith,  in  the 
comfort  of  a  reasonable,  religious  and  holy  hope.” 

Here  we  have  the  objective  testimony  in  the  com¬ 
munion  of  the  Church,  the  objective  reasonableness  of 
the  Christian  faith,  and  the  subjective  testimony  of 
a  good  conscience  as  the  attitude  of  a  redeemed  sinner 
in  view  of  death  and  of  eternity  and  of  entrance  into 
the  presence  of  God.  Faith,  reason  and  authority,  and 
Christ  as  their  foundation,  are  represented  as  the  sup¬ 
port  of  the  Christian  spirit  in  its  last  crucial  trial,  its 
baptism  in  the  suffering  of  death. 

Whatever  of  plausibility  there  may  be,  to  some 
minds,  in  the  proposition  that  every  man,  being 
responsible  for  his  own  belief,  must  begin  de  novo  and 
work  it  out  for  himself,  one  who  should  contend  that 
the  principle  should  be  applied  to  children,  would 
imperil  his  claim  to  rudimentary  intelligence.  We  are 
bound  to  teach  children  by  authority,  if  we  are  to 
teach  them  at  all.  In  our  responsible  years  there  may 
be  many  questions  of  religion  which  we  may  leave  in 
suspense,  and  upon  which  we  may  decline  to  make  up 
our  minds  and  to  pronounce  a  positive  opinion ;  but  to 
suspend  the  education  of  children  in  the  fundamental 
truths  of  religion  upon  the  ground  that  we  have  no 
right  to  assume  the  responsibility  of  teaching  them,  or 
to  forestall  their  inalienable  right  to  private  judgment 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


147 


to  choose  their  own  church,  and  their  own  creed, 
would  be  regarded  by  the  sensible  judgment  of  mankind 
as  an  absurdity.  If,  for  example,  you  leave  a  child  in 
doubt,  or  refuse  to  teach  him  with  authority  the  existence 
of  God,  the  worth  of  the  soul,  the  life  and  the  death  and 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  and  what  they  have 
done  for  mankind,  you  are  not  leaving  the  child’s  mind 
in  a  state  of  equilibrium  concerning  these  truths,  but 
you  are  creating  a  bias  in  his  mind  against  them.  He 
will  naturally  conclude  that  as  you  do  not  teach  them 
to  him,  they  are  nothing  to  you.  You  may  pray  your¬ 
self,  but  if  you  decline  to  teach  and  to  require  a  child 
to  kneel  and  to  utter  the  w'ords  of  prayer,  you  are 
forming  in  him  a  habit  against  the  practice  of  prayer 
wrhich  will  be  difficult  to  eradicate.  From  the  very 
beginning,  he  is  forming  habits  of  beliefs  or  of 
negations  of  belief.  Religion  is  a  matter  of  pressing 
import  from  the  very  dawn  of  conscious  life,  and  so 
wre  have  to  assume  the  responsibility  of  teaching 
children  with  authority,  long  before  they  come  to  the 
vears  of  discretion. 

The  treasures  of  the  past  cannot  be  communicated 
to  the  human  mind  in  the  early  stages  of  its  develop¬ 
ment  except  mainly  by  authority.  Y7e  cannot  wait 
until  the  time  arrives  when  they  can  be  grasped  and 
appropriated  by  the  intellect.  Its  truths  must  be 
taken  into  the  mind  in  the  form  of  principles  of  action 
and  habits  and  ways  of  looking  at  things,  in  order  to 


148 


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exercise  any  influence  upon  the  conduct  and  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  character.  And  yet  in  the  earliest 
years,  an  element  of  conscious  reason  progressively 
develops  by  the  side  of  authority,  growing  closer  to  it 
as  its  ally  and  its  justification. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  a  question  of  serious 
import  whether  a  teacher  or  even  a  parent,  has  the 
right  to  graft  upon  the  plastic  nature  of  a  child  views 
and  opinions  which  are  essentially  their  owrn,  and 
which  are  unsupported  by  the  authority  of  surround¬ 
ing  opinion,  or  are  in  direct  opposition  to  it.  There 
are  numberless  questions  of  religion  and  of  the  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  Bible,  which  a  sensible  instructor  of 
childhood  will  relegate  to  the  years  of  responsible 
reason  and  conscience. 

There  have  been  very  few  infidels  wrho  have  had  the 
moral  hardihood  or  the  obliquity  of  judgment,  to 
teach  infidelity  to  their  little  children.  A  sympathetic 
criticism  of  the  writings  of  John  Stuart  Mill  has  led 
many  of  his  readers  to  the  opinion  that,  but  for  the 
passionate  antipathy  of  his  father  towards  Christianity, 
as  represented  by  the  extreme  of  Calvinism  in  the 
doctrine  of  unconditional  election  injected  into  his 
mind  from  the  age  of  five  years,  he  might  have  been 
a  happy  man  and  a  great  Christian  philosopher. 

A  man  of  character  and  intelligence  will  always 
desire  some  authority  outside  of  himself  or  of  his  little 
clique,  to  guide  him  in  his  conduct  and  his  teaching  of 


AUTHORITY  IX  RELIGION 


149 


his  children,  knowing  that  they  are  defenseless  against 
error,  and  if  it  be  error,  he  alone  is  responsible  for  it. 
The  mind  of  a  child  is  sacred  and  wonderful  in  its 
possibilities  for  good  or  for  evil.  The  position,  then, 
of  authority,  is  a  permanent  one,  but  at  every  stage 
reason  is  associated  with  and  implicit  in  it  in  the 
formation  of  religious  beliefs.  The  same  principle 
applies  to  general  education. 

The  danger  of  illusion  and  waste  of  precious  time 
in  the  education  of  children  is  on  the  side  of  the  ex¬ 
clusive  dependence  upon  authority.  Because  we  must 
begin  with  authority,  and  a  child  at  first  must  accept 
what  is  taught  upon  authority,  we  pass  insensibly 
into  the  habit  of  conceiving  of  this  as  the  normal 
method  of  teaching.  How  many  thousands  of  chil¬ 
dren  are  taught  to  learn  by  rote,  as  if  the  object  and 
end  of  education  consisted  in  the  cultivation  of  a 
verbal  memory.  How  many  in  public  and  in  private 
schools,  are  being  taught  arithmetic  by  memorizing 
the  rules  and  the  processes  for  working  sums.  They 
learn  nothing  in  such  methods  but  mechanical  forms. 
Ask  them  for  the  reason  of  the  process,  and  they 
reply  by  referring  you  to  the  rule.  The  why  and 
wherefore  of  the  rule,  of  which  you  have  left  them  in 
profound  ignorance,  is  the  gist  of  the  whole  matter. 
This  is  only  an  illustration  of  the  futility  of  depend¬ 
ing  upon  authority  in  the  matter  of  education. 
Authority  that  receives  a  fact  or  a  principle  in  blind 


150 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


submission,  undermines  its  own  foundations.  The 
reasons  that  support  it  are  alone  the  guarantee  of  its 
permanence. 

Popular  education  is  the  most  remarkable  feature 
of  our  age,  and  the  boast  of  our  progress  contrasted 
with  all  that  have  preceded  us.  The  taxes  for  educa¬ 
tion  in  the  common  schools  are  paid  perhaps  with 
more  willingness  than  any  other  assessments.  The 
people  discuss  with  interest  the  questions  of  buildings 
and  providing  teachers,  and  in  many  instances  of 
compulsory  powers  of  sending  children  to  schools  ; 
but  at  last  the  main  question  is  not  the  school  build¬ 
ings  and  the  gathering  of  the  children  into  them,  but 
what  we  are  going  to  do  with  them  after  we  get  them 
there.  The  question  is  will  we  teach  them  mechanic¬ 
ally,  that  is  by  authority,  or  will  we  teach  them  to 
think  ?  Rome  for  centuries  taught  the  masses  of  the 
Christian  world  by  histrionic  worship,  dramatic  ritual 
and  by  priestly  authority  accepted  in  passive  submission. 
When  the  Bible  was  opened  at  the  reformation  and 
the  reason  of  mankind  awoke  from  its  long  sleep,  the 
spell  of  the  authority  of  Rome  vanished  as  the  shadows 
of  a  long  night ! 

In  all  education,  religious  and  secular,  the  first 
question  is  the  study  of  the  order  of  the  development 
of  a  child’s  mind.  The  child  observes  and  sees,  and 
the  impression  spontaneously  awakens  the  intelligence 
to  ask  the  meaning  of  the  phenomena,  the  reason  of 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


151 


the  things  it  beholds.  Repress  the  questioning  ac¬ 
tivity  of  a  child’s  mind  and  you  are  paralyzing  the 
nascent  forces  of  its  education.  Assign,  say  one 
teacher  to  fifty  scholars,  in  your  public  school  and 
you  render  impossible  any  direct  relation  between 
the  mind  of  teacher  and  scholar.  If  the  child  learns 
at  all,  it  must  be  by  wholesale,  in  cut  and  dried  an¬ 
swers  authoritatively  furnished  him.  If  he  asks  ques¬ 
tions,  it  is  out  of  order ;  discipline  renders  question 
asking  impracticable.  And  yet  the  very  object  of 
education  is  to  make  a  child’s  mind  alert  and  eager  to 
ask  questions.  Thus  authority  often  lingers  in  the 
realm  of  education  long  after  thought  and  reason 
should  have  entered  to  take  its  place,  and  build  un¬ 
derneath  it  enduring  foundations. 

"When  from  general  education  we  turn  to  the  special 
education  in  theology  or  philosophy,  we  find  the  re¬ 
lations  between  authority  and  reason  are  maintained 
in  these  higher  beliefs  which  belong  to  the  maturity 
of  our  development.  Our  literature  upon  this  subject 
has  been  recently  enriched  by  a  contribution  from  a 
leading  statesman  of  England,  characterized  by 
subtlety  of  philosophic  thought,  combined  with  great 
intellectual  force  and  rare  gifts  of  literary  expression. 
It  has  attained  a  wider  circulation  than  the  great 
majority  of  books  on  philosophy,  from  the  grace  and 
brilliancy  of  the  style  in  which  it  is  clothed.  I  refer 
to  Mr.  Balfour’s  “Foundations  of  Belief.”  The 


152 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


criticism  of  naturalism,  as  Mr.  Ealfour  designates  the 
materialistic  philosophy,  is  perhaps  the  most  valuable 
portion  of  the  work  as  a  specimen  of  luminous  rea¬ 
soning.  The  inadequacy  of  Mr.  Spencer’s  reply  is 
a  testimony  to  the  originality  of  Mr.  Balfour’s 
attack. 

The  main  purpose  of  the  book  seems  to  be  the  ex¬ 
altation  of  authority  at  the  expense  of  reason.  The 
impression  derived  from  the  productions  of  Mr.  Bal¬ 
four,  his  “  Defense  of  Philosophic  Doubt  ”  and  the 
present  volume,  is  that  of  a  painful  sensitiveness  in  his 
mind  to  the  inadequacy  of  reason  in  grappling  with 
the  deeper  problems  of  our  life  and  destiny ;  a 
nervous  impatience  with  our  limitations  and  a 
morbid  analysis  of  postulates.  His  conclusions  with 
reference  to  authority  and  reason  may  be  summed  up 
as  follows :  In  analyzing  the  causes  of  our  beliefs, 
not  only  in  religion  but  upon  all  subjects,  he  considers 
that  they  are  traceable  to,  and  rest  upon  authority, 
as  their  origin  and  their  foundation. 

He  represents  reason  as  the  enemy  and  the  rival  of 
authority.  He  regards  authority  as  standing  for  that 
group  of  non-rational  causes,  moral,  social  and  educa¬ 
tional,  which  produces  its  results  by  processes  other 
than  reasoning.  He  represents  the  popular  idea  to  be 
that  every  one  has  a  right  to  adopt  any  opinions  he 
pleases,  and  that  it  is  his  duty  to  sift  the  reasons  by 
which  such  opinions  may  be  supported  and  adjust  his 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


153 


convictions  accordingly.  “Authority,  therefore,  has 
no  place  among  the  legitimate  causes  of  belief.” 
“Beason,  and  reason  alone,  can  be  permitted  to 
mould  the  convictions  of  mankind.” 

He  finds  this  idea  at  the  foundation  of  the  largest 
area  of  the  popular  mind  of  our  generation  upon  po¬ 
litical  and  social  and  religious  philosophy.  He  pro¬ 
ceeds  to  demonstrate  the  absurdity  of  such  sentiments, 
and  illustrates  it  by  the  supposition  of  an  imaginary 
society,  in  which  every  man,  woman  and  child  has 
thrown  off  all  the  prejudices  due  to  education ;  all 
customs  and  habits  and  beliefs;  all  laws  governing 
social  and  individual  life ;  each  one  considering  it  a 
paramount  duty  critically  to  examine  the  reasons  for 
everything  that  they  have  believed,  or  for  every 
course  of  conduct  to  which  they  have  been  accus¬ 
tomed  to  conform  beginning  with  the  Ten  Command¬ 
ments.  As  preliminary  to  the  question  whether  these 
commandments  are  to  be  obeyed,  he  represents  these 
persons  as  asking  themselves  the  question,  is  there 
really  any  such  thing  as  right  and  wrong  ?  May  they 
not  be,  as  some  of  our  scientific  people  say,  mere 
mechanical  growths ;  automatic  animal  impulses  of 
likes  and  dislikes  planted  in  us  with  no  moral  sense 
or  significance  in  them  ? 

We  may  readily  agree  with  Mr.  Balfour  when  he 
asserts  that  “  to  say  that  such  a  community,  if  it  acted 
upon  the  opinions  thus  arrived  at,  would  stand  but  a 


154 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


poor  chance  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  is  to  say 
far  too  little.  It  could  never  even  begin  to  be ;  and, 
if  by  a  miracle  it  was  created,  it  would  without  doubt 
immediately  resolve  itself  into  its  constituent  ele¬ 
ments.”1  This  is  true  when  alleged  as  an  argument 
against  what  Mr.  Balfour  considers  the  popular  con¬ 
ception  of  authority.  If  this  is  the  popular  philos¬ 
ophy,  it  may  be  admitted  without  hesitation  that  it 
tends,  nay  inevitably  leads  to  the  disintegration  and 
destruction  of  all  beliefs. 

Mr.  Balfour  fails  to  define  authority  and  reason,2 
which  he  conceives  of  as  antagonistic.  Authority,  as 
he  employs  it,  is  like  some  viewless  force  of  nature 
without  genesis ;  an  undefinable  principle.  The  rea¬ 
son  to  which  he  refers  is  the  pure  reason  of  logic,  not 
the  wider  reason  of  conscience,  of  faith,  of  duty,  the 
moral  reason  which  is  ceaselessly  building  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  our  beliefs.  Mere  argumentation  may  be 
only  a  sifting  process  which  constitutes  an  accom¬ 
paniment  of  the  development  of  beliefs  ;  but  moral 
reason  is  itself  the  organic  life  of  authority.  The 
proposition  that  authority  and  reason  are  inimical 
at  once  encounters  facts  which  contain  its  refutation. 
Why  is  it  that  authority,  when  it  is  challenged,  at 
once  appeals  to  reason  to  justify  its  claims  ?  Why  if 
it  is  supreme  and  self-sufficient,  does  it  descend  from 
its  high  ground  and  seek  the  lower  ground  of  reason 


1  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  204. 


8  See  note  6. 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


155 


for  its  support  ?  This  very  argument  for  authority  so 
admirably  put,  is  a  product  of  Mr.  Balfour’s  reason. 
The  proposition  that  reason  is  to  be  ruled  out  of  court 
and  authority  alone  to  be  heard  is  refuted  by  the  facts 
in  the  case.  If  one  is  essentially  constructive  and  the 
other  essentially  destructive,  the  appeal  of  authority 
to  reason  to  support  it  becomes  a  contradiction. 

The  Church  of  Rome  holds  the  doctrine  of  authority 
in  its  ultimate  form.  The  development  of  that  doc¬ 
trine  culminates  after  many  stages,  all  involving  con¬ 
troversy,  in  the  doctrine  of  papal  infallibility,  which 
was  the  logical  outcome  of  the  principle  which  has 
been  working  in  the  mind  of  that  church  since  the 
reformation.  If  authority  is  to  stand  its  ground  and 
cover  all  questions  that  disturb  and  disintegrate  the 
organic  unity  and  the  peace  of  the  Church,  it  must 
find  a  voice  to  express  it.  Christ,  the  great  head  of 
the  Church  established  it  here  upon  earth  as  His  repre¬ 
sentative  and  Ilis  body;  if  so,  He  must  also  have  en¬ 
dowed  it  with  authority,  and  that  authority,  to  be 
effective,  must  also  be  infallible  and  final.  The  neces¬ 
sary  conclusion  was  the  declaration  of  papal  infalli¬ 
bility.  How  when  authority  in  the  form  of  papal 
infallibility  is  assailed,  it  at  once  seeks  and  summons 
to  its  aid  the  alliance  and  the  justification  of  reason. 
It  seeks  to  prove  its  doctrine  of  infallibility  by  infer¬ 
ence,  by  a  priori  reasoning  and  by  Scripture;  thus 
assuming  that  the  authority  of  infallibility  in  order  to 


156 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


be  accepted,  must  be  proved,  that  is  by  reason.  She 
says  to  the  reason  of  those  to  whom  she  presents  her 
claims,  “  Y ou  believe  in  the  authority  of  Christ,  and 
did  not  Christ  say  to  Peter,  ‘Thou  art  Peter,  and 
upon  this  Rock  I  will  build  My  Church,  and  the 
gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it  ’  ?  Or  again 
did  He  not  command  the  same  Apostle,  ‘Feed  My 
sheep  ’  ?  ”  How  these  words  of  Christ  are  connected 
with  the  claims  of  Rome  to  infallibility,  how  by  exe¬ 
gesis  they  are  to  be  interpreted  as  supporting  that 
tremendous  assumption,  is  to  be  determined  between 
Roman  Catholic  and  non-Roman  Catholic  controver¬ 
sialists. 

We  may  agree  with  Mr.  Balfour  also  in  what  I  un¬ 
derstand  to  be  his  own  conviction  that  such  an  inter¬ 
pretation  of  these  words  of  Christ  is  essentially 
irrational  and  can  only  be  accounted  for  upon  the 
supposition  that,  in  those  who  adopt  it,  reason  has 
been  so  dominated  by  the  pressure  of  authority,  so 
shut  in  by  the  foregone  conclusion  to  infallibility,  as 
to  deprive  it  of  freedom  and  paralyze  its  activities. 
It  would  seem  that  the  fallacy  and  the  contradiction 
in  this  argument  in  support  of  papal  infallibility 
would  be  obvious  to  the  common  mind,  but  Rome  has 
profound  confidence  in  popular  ignorance.  She  for¬ 
gets  that  this  is  a  new  age  when  all  men  are  beginning 
to  think. 

But  the  point  for  which  wre  introduce  the  illustra- 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


157 


tion,  is  the  anomaly  presented  by  a  church  first  claim, 
in g  an  infallibility,  which  suppresses  and  denies  the 
rights  of  reason,  and  then  summoning  that  very  rea¬ 
son  which  it  repudiates  to  support  its  claims.  We 
take  this  as  a  proof  of  the  instinctive  consciousness  in 
all  authority  or  authorities,  that  man  being  a  reason¬ 
able  being,  reason  must  be  one  of  the  doors  through 
which  authority  must  enter  for  conviction  and  ac¬ 
ceptance  by  the  human  mind. 

Again,  in  a  rhetorical  passage  of  effortless  elo¬ 
quence,  Mr.  Balfour  tells  us  of  the  work  that  author¬ 
ity  does  in  our  beliefs  and  in  our  practical  life.  “  At 
every  moment  of  our  lives  as  individuals,  as  members 
of  a  family,  of  a  party,  of  a  nation,  of  a  Church,  of  a 
universal  brotherhood,  the  silent,  continuous,  un¬ 
noticed  influence  of  authority  moulds  our  feelings, 
our  aspirations  and  what  we  are  more  immediately 
concerned  with,  our  beliefs.” 1  Again  he  says,  “  It  is 
authority,  rather  than  reason,  to  which  in  the  main, 
we  owe  not  religion  only,  but  ethics  and  politics.”2 
We  might  ask  with  reference  to  those  customs  re¬ 
ferred  to,  which  we  observe  in  our  daily  life  without 
reasoning  about  them,  those  traditions  and  habits  to 
which  we  conform  and  never  think  of  demanding  a 
logical  proof  as  to  why  we  adopt  them,  does  it  follow 
that,  because  we  seem  to  observe  them  automatically, 
they  are  not  in  their  origin  the  children  of  reason  ? 

1  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  236.  2  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  239. 


158 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


Is  it  rational  to  suppose  that  reason  had  nothing  to  do 
with  their  beginnings  ?  Did  they  begin  to  be  out  of 
nothing,  or  by  spontaneous  generation  ?  Does  Mr. 
Balfour  suppose  the  majority  of  people  hold  their 
beliefs  in  their  churches,  their  religious  observances, 
their  daily  customs  and  canons  of  social  life  by  the 
simple  force  of  authority,  without  an  element  of 
reason  in  it  ?  Is  not  authority,  without  reason  at  its 
origin,  unimaginable  and  unthinkable  ?  Authority  is 
a  product ;  it  must  have  been  produced  by  something. 
The  growth  of  law,  extending  over  centuries,  is  in  de¬ 
cisions  in  which  great  principles  are  laid  down,  and 
established  by  reason,  by  proofs,  by  the  toil  of  mind 
under  the  tremendous  pressure  of  legal  responsibility 
to  justice  and  to  judgment ;  and  those  decisions  be¬ 
come  by  common  consent,  an  authority  for  the  future 
in  like  cases.  Is  that  a  blind  authority,  with  no 
reason  in  it  ?  Nay,  it  is  authority  born  out  of  the 
travail  of  reason  and  of  moral  conscience  guiding  the 
reason,  and  driving  it  to  its  work  and  supporting  it 
under  the  pressure. 

The  history  of  experimental  sciences  furnishes 
almost  every  year  examples  of  old  authorities  super¬ 
seded  by  new  ones  and  theories  subverted  which  once 
obtained  general  acceptance.  The  old  is  either  dis¬ 
credited  or  absorbed  and  transmuted  into  the  new. 
The  law  of  progress  in  the  knowledge  of  nature,  con¬ 
stitutes  each  generation  the  heir  of  all  preceding 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


159 


generations,  and  imposes  upon  us  of  to-day  the  duty 
to  hand  on  the  wealth  from  the  past,  enriched  by  our 
own  contributions,  to  the  future.  Therefore  the  irre¬ 
pressible  instinct  for  knowledge  and  the  love  of  its 
pursuit.  The  great  philosopher  of  the  seventeenth 
century  exclaimed,  “  If  I  held  truth  captive,  I  should 
open  my  hand  and  let  it  fly,  in  order  that  I  might 
pursue  it  again.” 1  It  is  perhaps  an  exaggerated  ex¬ 
pression  of  the  law  that  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  is 
its  own  reward.  While  it  is  true  that  we  are  to  work 
for  the  future,  yet  that  motive  is  too  weak  and  vision¬ 
ary  for  the  impulse  of  progress,  unless  reinforced  by  the 
present  joy  in  the  search  of  the  truth  for  its  own  sake. 

It  is  however  an  impressive  truth  in  the  history  of 
the  advance  of  knowledge,  that  a  discovery,  while  it 
is  a  benefit  to  its  own  age,  is  far  more  important  as  a 
stepping  stone  to  future  discoveries  in  the  ages  to 
come.  “  Knowledge,”  says  St.  Paul,  “  shall  vanish 
away.”  That  is,  old  knowledge  shall  be  superseded 
by  the  new  ;  but  the  old  was  the  stepping  stone  for 
the  new,  and  therefore  it  has  its  place  in  the  temple 
of  knowledge  and  in  the  grateful  memory  of  man. 
Every  new  knowledge  creates  a  pervading  atmos¬ 
phere  of  its  own,  which  sways  for  the  time  the  belief 
and  the  acceptance  of  its  own  generation.  The 
knowledge  creates  the  authority,  not  the  authority 
the  knowledge. 


1  Malebranche. 


160 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


Mr.  Balfour  refers  to  another  kind  of  authority, 
wider  and  more  potent  than  the  authority  of  custom, 
because  we  are  more  unconscious  of  it.  It  is  the  au¬ 
thority  of  public  sentiment,  which  is  like  the  atmos¬ 
phere  we  breathe,  where  the  pressure  is  equalized  so 
that  we  cannot  feel  it.  He  calls  this  kind  of  authority 
a  psychological  climate,  and  thus  describes  it : 

“  But  the  power  of  authority  is  never  more  subtle 
and  effective  than  when  it  produces  a  psychological 
atmosphere,  or  climate  favorable  to  the  life  of  certain 
modes  of  belief,  unfavorable,  and  even  fatal,  to  the 
life  of  others.”  These  climates  “  may  cover  a  genera¬ 
tion,  an  epoch,  a  whole  civilization,  or  it  may  be  nar¬ 
rowed  down  to  a  sect,  a  family,  or  even  an  indi¬ 
vidual.  .  .  .  But  whatever  may  be  their  limits, 

and  whatever  their  character,  their  importance  to  the 
conduct  of  life,  social  and  individual,  cannot  easily  be 
overstated.”  1 

¥e  agree  to  the  proposition  and  appreciate  the 
felicity  of  its  statement.  The  power  of  public  senti¬ 
ment  for  evil  or  good  is  practically  incalculable.  But 
the  real  question  we  are  discussing  is  what  is  the 
origin  of  public  sentiment  ?  What  is  the  genesis  of 
psychological  climate,  to  which  such  potency  is 
attributed  ?  Is  it  outside  of  human  nature,  like  the 
laws  of  matter,  like  the  force  of  gravity  ?  Is  it  inde¬ 
pendent  of  the  conscience,  the  moral  reason,  the 

1  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  214. 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


161 


character  of  the  community  where  it  prevails  ?  Has 
this  character  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  formation 
of  these  standards,  the  creation  of  this  psychological 
atmosphere  which  it  breathes  ?  We  are  told  by 
persons  who  are  familiar  with  social  conditions  in 
parts  of  our  country,  that  there  are  communities 
where  belief  in  the  sacredness  of  marriage  has  lost 
its  hold  on  the  people.  The  psychological  atmosphere 
has  been  unfavorable,  and  even  fatal,  as  Mr.  Balfour 
would  say,  to  the  life  of  that  belief.  Translate  the 
statement  from  the  form  of  rhetoric  to  the  language 
of  fact,  and  reality,  and  you  would  put  it  thus.  The 
conscience,  the  moral  reason  of  the  community  has 
yielded  to  the  forces  of  depravity.  Educate  the  con¬ 
science,  redeem  the  moral  reason  from  the  sophistries 
of  the  flesh  and  you  change  the  psychological  atmos¬ 
phere,  as  you  redeem  land  from  noxious  vapors  by 
draining  it.  Truth  is  truth,  and  if  you  get  it  into  the 
hearts  of  men  it  will  take  care  of  the  psychological 
atmosphere  that  they  breathe.  It  will  substitute  the 
pure  air  for  the  foul  air ;  the  authority  of  goodness 
and  righteousness  for  the  authority  of  lust  and 
wickedness.  Mr.  Balfour  makes  the  mistake  which 
besets  the  gift  of  poetic  genius,  of  identifying  the  idea 
with  the  metaphorical  form  in  which  he  clothes  it,  and 
then  using  it  as  an  argument,  forgetting  that  it  is  only 
a  metaphor. 

When  we  designate  a  public  sentiment  in  a  given 


162 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


community  upon  social  life,  or  politics,  or  religion  as 
a  “psychological  climate,”  we  cannot  conceive,  nor 
could  the  author  mean,  that  it  is  arbitrary,  mys¬ 
terious,  irresponsible  like  the  winds  which  blow  as 
they  list,  like  the  climate  that  bathes  us  with  its 
genial  warmth  and  light  to-day,  or  shadows  and  chills 
us  with  its  bleak  and  stormy  skies  to-morrow.  If 
public  sentiment  is  like  nature,  then  we  cannot  change 
it.  We  have  only  to  submit  to  it  like  a  law  of  nature. 
The  public  sentiment  in  this  country  from  its  origin, 
has  cherished  the  institution  of  Sunday ;  the  belief  in 
the  moral  and  religious  obligation  to  set  apart  one  day 
in  seven  as  a  day  of  rest  and  worship.  A  clergyman 
in  New  York,  in  an  admirable  discussion  of  the 
authority  of  Sunday,  finds  the  obligation  to  observe 
Sunday  in  the  unwritten  tradition  of  our  national 
government.  “  The  constitution  takes  it  for  granted 
as  the  moral  code,  the  law  for  personal  and  national 
conduct.” 1  It  has  for  its  support  the  consensus  of 
civilized  nations.  Wherever  Christianity  goes,  Sun¬ 
day  rests  upon  the  authority  of  God.  The  Bible 
makes  it  the  beginning  of  history.  Like  the  pillars  of 
Hercules,  the  story  of  creation  reveals  it  standing,  and 
beyond  it  there  is  nothing.  It  is  the  preface  to  the 
religious  history  of  the  race. 

People  in  numbers  without  a  precedent  in  the 
annals  of  mankind,  are  migrating  to  this  wonder- 
1  Dr.  Huntington,  New  York,  Dec.,  1901. 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


1C3 


ful  country,  seeking  liberty,  and  not  knowing  what 
liberty  is.  Accustomed  to  absolute  authority,  that 
gives  no  reason  for  itself,  requiring  blind  submission, 
their  Christianity  a  name  for  scenic  ceremonials  that 
have  lost  their  meaning;  their  Bibles  closed;  their 
reason  and  conscience  uneducated,  they  come  across 
the  sea  and  your  Sundays  confront  them  as  an  enemy 
to  liberty.  Their  condition  is  the  necessary  result  of 
absolute  government  built  upon  the  suppression  of 
reason ;  of  authority  that  is  objective  with  no  sub¬ 
jective  element  in  it ;  authority  divorced  from  reason 
and  asserting  its  sufficiency  without  reason.  They 
become  a  menace  to  our  Christian  civilization,  until 
Christian  ideas,  Christian  knowledge  and  Christian 
reason  form  in  them  a  Christian  public  sentiment. 
And  the  public  sentiment  becomes  the  foundation  of 
loyal,  intelligent  citizenship. 

Mr.  Balfour  says  that  authority  in  the  form  of  a 
“  psychological  climate  ”  may  be  narrowed  down  to  a 
“  sect  or  a  family.”  It  is  true  that  sects  and  families 
may  receive  by  the  authority  of  hereditary  trans¬ 
mission  customs,  traditions,  manners  which  distinguish 
them  as  peculiarities  from  the  order  and  the  habits  of 
life  around  them.  But  these  local,  limited  authorities 
are  ever  tending  to  wTeaken  and  gradually  disappear, 
and  are  absorbed  by  the  reasonable  disposition  of 
human  nature  to  conform  to  the  manners  and  the 
common  sense  of  the  people  around  them.  The 


164 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


“  psychological  climate  ”  of  families  in  the  same  com¬ 
munities  is  as  diverse  as  the  temperature  of  the  differ¬ 
ent  quarters  of  the  globe.  Here  it  is  worldly  in  tone, 
in  feeling,  in  conversation ;  grown  people  and  children 
knowing  nothing  apparently  and  believing  in  nothing 
but  worldliness.  Here  is  another  with  the  atmosphere 
of  religion,  of  gracious  manners  and  pure  living,  and 
family  prayer  and  private  devotion  the  law  of  the 
home.  Men  like  these  to  whom  I  am  speaking,  who 
have  chosen  the  Christian  ministry  for  their  call¬ 
ing,  usually  have  some  such  antecedents  behind 
them. 

It  is  said  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  a  great  pioneer  in 
the  science  of  popular  government,  that  as  he  was 
riding  through  his  estate  with  Madison,  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  they  passed  the  home  of  one  of 
his  tenants.  In  the  yard  was  the  mother  with  a 
group  of  children  around  her.  Jefferson  paused  and 
turned  to  his  friend  saying,  “  Madison,  that  woman 
has  family  prayers  every  morning ;  she  is  bringing  up 
her  children  upon  the  book  of  Proverbs,  the  Gospels, 
and  the  book  of  Common  Prayer.  She  is  worth  more 
to  Virginia  and  to  the  country  than  political  philoso¬ 
phers.  Those  are  the  people  that  make  nations 
strong.” 

In  the  realm  of  spirit  and  of  moral  free  agency  we 
choose  our  authorities,  Conscience  and  moral  reason 
within,  and  the  revelation  of  God’s  law  and  His 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


105 


spirit  from  without  have,  if  we  will,  the  choice  of 
the  masters  we  will  serve. 

It  is  with  the  races  as  with  early  childhood,  human 
education  begins  with  authority ;  but  with  every  ad¬ 
vance  from  its  childhood  reason  and  moral  responsi¬ 
bility  within  are  co-workers  with  influences  from 
without.  Suppress  reason  in  obedience  to  external 
authority,  and  education  stops.  Christ  said  to  the 
Jews,  “Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall 
make  you  free.”  There  is  that  in  the  truth  which 
will  find  an  answer  in  your  reason,  an  acceptance  in 
your  faith,  a  welcome  from  your  conscience  and  your 
heart,  emancipating  you  from  doubt  and  fear  and  the 
bondage  of  ignorance,  the  imaginations  of  supersti¬ 
tions,  the  slavery  to  the  world  and  the  flesh.  Any 
theory  that  tends  to  divorce  authority  from  rea¬ 
son,  or  to  conceive  of  them  as  antagonistic  forces 
is  playing  into  the  hands  of  systems,  which  in  the 
judgment  of  history,  have  been  the  enemies  of  prog¬ 
ress  and  the  allies  of  superstition. 

To  lean  upon  authority  is  a  tendency  of  the  human 
mind  in  its  yearning  for  certainty,  for  tangible  re¬ 
ality.  It  is  a  temptation  to  the  human  heart  as  a 
refuge  from  the  trial  of  doubt,  from  the  discipline  of 
walking  by  faith  and  not  by  sight.  Newman  left  the 
Church  of  England  upon  that  ground,  and  that 
ground  alone.  Its  doctrine  of  authority  was  too 
vague  and  indefinite ;  he  wanted  a  Church  to  still  his 


166 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


anxieties  and  quiet  his  doubts,  to  which  his  faith  could 
surrender  with  unthinking  submission.  The  craving 
for  infallibility  is  not  an  error  of  Romanism  alone ;  it 
is  a  desire  of  human  nature  for  authority  upon  which 
to  rest  its  burden,  and  to  still  its  anxiety.  An  arch¬ 
bishop  of  the  Church  of  England,  once  Newman’s 
closest  friend,  one  of  the  few  men  whose  writings  will 
hold  a  permanent  place  in  the  realm  of  religious 
literature,  has  these  striking  words.  Speaking  of  the 
desire  for  infallible  authority  he  says,  “  The  craving 
for  infallibility  is  only  an  enquiry  after  some  mode  of 
exemption  from  all  further  enquiry ;  only  a  care  to 
obtain  relief  from  all  further  need  of  care;  only  a 
navigation  in  search  of  some  safe  haven  in  which  the 
helm  may  be  abandoned  and  the  vessel  left  to  ride 
securely  without  any  need  of  watching  the  winds  and 
currents  and  of  looking  out  for  shoals  and  rocks  ;  only 
a  hope  to  acquire  a  release  from  all  necessity  of  vigi¬ 
lant  circumspection.  Can  we  wonder  then  that  all 
that  ministers  to  such  a  principle,  should  unite  with 
ready  acceptance  from  human  indolence  and  spiritual 
carelessness  ?  ” 1 

It  is  not  intended  in  this  criticism  of  Mr.  Balfour’s 
theory  of  authority,  to  identify  it  with  the  Roman 
principle  of  infallibility,  but  only  to  point  out  the 
direction  in  which  authority  which  disowns  reason 
logically  and  naturally  tends  to  lead.  It  is  doubtless 

1  Whately’s  “Errors  of  Romanism  Traceable  to  Human  Nature.’ ’ 


AUTHORITY  IX  RELIGION 


167 


far  from  Mr.  Balfour’s  intention  to  discredit  the  his¬ 
toric  evidences  of  Christianity,  but  if  we  are  to  accept 
authority  divorced  from  reason  as  the  foundation  of 
belief,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  historic  evidences  can 
hold  their  ground  or  what  place  is  left  for  them. 

Dr.  Hort  at  the  close  of  “  The  Christian  Ecclesia,” 
a  contribution  to  the  study  of  the  New  Testament 
which  has  placed  English  scholarship  in  the  front 
ranks  of  religious  thought,  says,  “  In  this  as  in  so 
many  other  things  is  seen  the  futility  of  endeavoring 
to  make  the  Apostolic  history  into  a  set  of  authorita¬ 
tive  precedents  to  be  rigorously  copied  without  regard 
to  time  and  place,  thus  turning  the  Gospel  into  a  sec¬ 
ond  Levitical  Code.  The  Apostolic  Age  is  full  of 
embodiments  of  purposes  and  principles  of  the  most 
instructive  kind :  but  the  responsibility  of  choosing 
the  means  was  left  forever  to  the  ecclesia  itself,  and 
to  each  ecclesia,  guided  by  ancient  precedent  on  the 
one  hand,  and  adaptation  to  present  and  future  needs 
on  the  other.  The  lesson-book  of  the  ecclesia  and  of 
every  ecclesia  is  not  a  law,  but  a  history.”  1 

The  conception  of  authority  as  resting  upon  and 
appealing  to  rational  convictions  and  supported  by 
evidences  from  history,  from  revelation  and  from  the 
experience  of  all  the  Christian  ages  as  embodied  in 
the  Church,  is  contained  in  St.  Paul’s  words  to  the 
Ephesians,  “  Now  therefore  ye  are  no  more  strangers 
1  Dr.  Hort,  The  Christian  Ecclesia,  p.  232. 


168 


AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 


and  foreigners,  but  fellow-citizens  with  the  saints  and 
of  the  household  of  God.  And  are  built  upon  the 
foundation  of  the  Apostles  and  prophets,  Jesus  Christ 
Himself  being  the  chief  corner-stone.” 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 


LECTUKE  V 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

Supposed  antagonism  between  reason  and  authority  due  to  an  erro¬ 
neous  definition  of  reason.  Reason  and  authority  together  form 
our  beliefs.  What  is  belief  ?  Canon  Mozley’s  illustration  of  the 
principle  of  belief.  Belief  correspondence  between  external  and 
internal  evidence.  First  element  in  belief  in  Christ  is  historical 
faith.  Essence  of  Christianity  belief  in  the  divine  and  human 
personality  of  Christ.  Objection  to  historical  faith  as  foundation 
of  Christianity.  Professor  Green’s  position.  Rev.  James  Mar- 
tineau  and  Professor  Wallace  on  historical  faith.  The  place  of 
history  in  moulding  the  religious  ideas  of  men.  Conception  of 
history  in  the  organic  life  of  the  race.  History  transmits  capital 
of  one  generation  to  the  next.  People  of  Israel  trained  by  his¬ 
tory.  Humanity  learns  its  lessons  through  the  drama  of  its  life. 
Facts  of  Christianity  verified  by  highest  degree  of  external  testi¬ 
mony,  but  unlike  all  other  history,  finds  internal  verification  in 
human  nature.  The  Church  brings  us  the  creeds  and  the  gospels 
to  confirm  and  vivify  the  facts.  The  word  fact  applied  to  Chris¬ 
tianity  as  historic.  Lessing’s  influence  upon  Germany  and 
modern  thought,  upon  Bauer,  the  Tubingen  school  and  James 
Martineau.  Lessing’s  argument  against  historical  Christianity 
criticised.  Writers  who  contend  that  experience  of  power  of  the 
Gospel  adequate  to  preserve  Christianity  if  the  Gospel  history 
should  be  lost.  Fallacy  of  the  position.  Argument  that  men 
believed  in  Christ  before  gospels  were  written.  Misapprehension 
involved.  Authority  of  the  Christian  gospels  bears  same  relation 
to  first  as  to  later  generations.  Dr.  Stanton  of  Cambridge.  Ex¬ 
perience  of  Christians  of  every  name,  testimony  to  the  historic 
faith.  Experience  and  history  testify  to  the  central  position  of 
the  incarnation  as  the  authoritative  revelation  of  Christianity. 
Outside  of  the  Church  controversies  Christian  thought  in  all 
ages  centres  upon  the  incarnation.  An  example,  the  theory  of 
the  Kenosis  in  the  present  generation.  Statement  of  the  theory. 

171 


172  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 


Held  by  ablest  theologians  as  tending  to  exclude  the  divine  na¬ 
ture  in  Christ.  Objections  to  the  theory.  Controversies  of  the 
Christian  Church  hold  position  of  far  higher  importance  than  the 
speculations  of  individual  thinkers.  The  Arian  controversy. 
The  divinity  of  Christ  the  central  question.  Thomas  Carlyle’s 
remark  concerning  the  Arian  controversy.  Prophetic  significance 
of  Carlyle’s  words.  The  natural  man  and  the  world-spirit  inim¬ 
ical  to  an  incarnate  Saviour. 

In  the  last  lecture  we  considered  the  necessary  co¬ 
ordination  of  authority  with  reason.  If  it  may  be 
admitted  that  as  members  of  the  family,  of  society, 
of  the  party,  the  state  or  the  Church,  our  feelings,  be¬ 
liefs  and  habits  are  due,  among  other  causes,  to 
authority,  yet  authority  finds  its  roots  in  reason,  and 
falls  back  upon  reason  as  its  justification.  This  is 
evidence  that  reason,  both  active  and  receptive,  is  con¬ 
cerned  in  its  production. 

We  found  also  in  the  writers  in  whose  systems  of 
thought  authority  and  reason  are  placed  in  the  atti¬ 
tude  of  antagonism,  an  inadequate  and  erroneous 
definition  of  reason.  It  is  easy  to  prove  reason  to  be 
inimical  to  authority  and  destructive  of  beliefs  by  de¬ 
fining  it  as  an  exclusively  dialectic  faculty ;  that  by 
which  we  argue  about  anything  and  everything,  truth 
or  error,  things  established  or  things  repudiated  by 
common  consent ;  drawing  conclusions  from  premises 
that  we  have  not  examined,  or  claiming  the  logical 
process  as  the  means  and  the  only  means  for  arriving 
at  truth;  especially  religious  truth  where  the  pre¬ 
mises  are  always  too  small  for  the  tremendous  conclu- 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  173 

sions,  and  where  the  mere  logical  faculty  conducts  us 
only  into  a  region  of  doubt.  That  kind  of  reason  is 
a  mere  formula.  Keason  itself  is  a  faculty,  the  widest 
of  our  nature.  Conscience,  will,  feeling  and  faith  are 
all  pervaded  by  the  higher  reason.  This  is  the  reason 
which  is  the  friend  of  authority,  and  with  authority 
builds  the  foundations  of  our  beliefs.  With  that  con¬ 
ception  in  our  minds,  let  us  ask  in  the  first  place  what 
is  belief  ?  What  enters  into  its  constitution  ?  Is  it 
simple  or  compound  ? 

Canon  Mozley  who,  even  when  he  is  wrong,  is  more 
interesting  and  harder  to  answer  than  most  of  us  are 
when  we  are  right,  has  this  luminous  reply  to  the 
question,  what  is  belief?  “We  never  do  in  fact  be¬ 
lieve  anything  upon  external  evidence  only.  Some¬ 
body  whom  you  meet  in  the  streets  tells  you  a  piece 
of  news ;  you  believe  it  instantly,  and  as  a  matter  of 
course ;  but  what  is  it  that  makes  you  so  believe  it ; 
his  own  assertion  simply  without  anything  else  ?  By 
no  means ;  he  might  tell  you  some  things ;  and  you 
would  not  believe  them,  or  at  any  rate  you  would  re¬ 
main  a  long  time  in  suspense.  There  is  something, 
then,  besides  the  report  of  the  witness,  or  the  external 
evidence,  which  enters  into  the  grounds  of  your  be¬ 
lief,  and  that  is  the  antecedent  probability  of  the  fact 
itself.  If  this  is  complete  and  it  is  a  fact  of  a  com¬ 
mon  everyday  sort,  then  you  believe  the  report  of  it 
without  the  least  hesitation.  Thus  the  very  common- 


174  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

est  sort  of  credence  shows  upon  what  ground  belief  is 
raised ;  that  it  is  partly  antecedent  probability,  and 
partly  external  testimony.  Transfer  the  belief  to  a 
higher  subject,  and  let  the  grounds  of  probability  be 
not  the  mere  experience  of  outward  life,  but  cer¬ 
tain  inward  instincts  and  affections,  and  the  law  of 
credence  still  holds.  Your  ground  of  belief  is  a  sense 
of  probability  meeting  and  uniting  with  external  evi¬ 
dence.  These  instincts  and  affections  are  what  Chris¬ 
tianity  falls  in  with  and  with  which  it  coincides.” 1 

The  analysis  is  as  simple,  as  it  is  profound.  The 
antecedent  probability  is  waiting  in  the  mind  for  the 
light  of  the  external  revelation  from  God  to  awaken 
and  confirm  it.  The  truth  is  recognized  by  the  in¬ 
stincts  and  yearnings,  the  sense  of  need  already 
existing  and  planted  in  the  mind  by  the  Spirit  of 
Christ ;  the  light  that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh 
into  the  world.  The  point  of  coincidence  of  these  is 
where  belief  emerges,  and  where  its  foundations  are 
laid.  The  external  evidence  corresponds  with  the 
internal  sense  of  need,  the  unconscious  cry  for 
help. 

The  two  grounds,  the  external  and  the  internal,  in 
their  correspondence  and  their  congruity,  make  the 
whole  of  what  we  call  belief.  A  distinguished 
thinker  says,  “  Belief  in  its  last  analysis  is  the  relation 
between  truth  and  knowledge.”  That  is,  truth 

1  Mozley,  Lectures,  etc.,  pp.  3,  4,  1893. 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  175 

revealed  must  enter  in  and  take  hold  upon  the  mind 
and  find  there  an  adaptation,  a  welcome,  a  home  pre¬ 
pared  for  it.  This  is  another  form  of  saying  that 
whenever  we  believe,  there  must  be  something  in  the 
proposition  which  is  reasonable  to  us.  We  may  not 
see  all  of  the  reasons  for  it,  but  there  must  be  some 
point  to  which  the  truth  links  itself,  and  finds  a  re¬ 
sponse  in  our  inward  nature. 

The  mere  facts  of  the  gospel  would  have  no  more 
power  to  produce  religious  conviction  apart  from 
their  adaptation  to  our  needs,  than  any  other  his¬ 
torical  facts.  We  might  believe  the  reports  of  the 
witnesses  of  all  that  Christ  did  and  said.  The  facts 
of  Christianity,  the  verity  of  the  testimony  of  the 
witnesses  who  record  the  facts,  could  not  produce 
Christian  belief.  Facts  cannot  enter  our  spiritual 
nature  simply  as  such.  They  must  be  appropriated 
and  interpreted  in  their  spiritual  significance.  His¬ 
toric  verity,  alone,  leaves  a  fact  standing  outside  of  the 
soul  as  an  assent  of  the  logical  understanding;  a 
barren  content  of  the  memory.  Spiritual  congeniality 
quickens  the  dead  fact  into  life. 

Thus  the  analysis  finds  in  the  revelation  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  its  adaptation  and  the  response  to  it  in  the 
reasonable  will,  and  sense  of  sin  and  need  in  human 
nature,  the  foundations  of  belief  ;  of  saving  faith. 

This  is  to  say  that  belief  is  a  combination  of  the 
objective  and  the  subjective  ;  the  divine  authority  of 


176  AUTHORITY — THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

Christ  made  known  to  us  by  revelation,  ministered  by 
the  Church  and  accepted  by  the  reason,  the  heart  and 
the  obedience  of  the  will. 

The  first  element  in  belief  in  Christ  is  historical 
faith.  By  that  we  mean,  not  alone  faith  in  the  verity 
of  the  gospel  record  of  all  the  facts  concerning  Christ, 
but  also  in  the  answer  to  the  question  which  Christ 
Himself  propounded  to  the  Pharisees ;  “  What  think 
ye  of  Christ  ?  ”  who  is  He,  whence  did  He  come  ? 
What  does  the  history  tell  us  from  the  beginning  as 
to  the  answer  of  Christian  faith  to  this  question? 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  whatever  Christians  have 
held  as  the  essence  of  Christianity,  whatever  the 
church  teaches  as  the  centre  and  heart  of  the  gospel, 
roots  itself  in  the  fact  of  the  human  and  the  divine 
personality  of  Christ.  The  Church  has  taken  her 
stand  there  through  all  the  ages.  She  has  fought  her 
battles  to  hold  that  ground,  and  though  her  lines  have 
wavered,  she  has  never  been  driven  back  and  left  the 
ground  to  the  enemy ;  she  has  never  been  permitted 
to  fall  away  from  that  faith.  If  we  could  entertain 
the  possibility  that  it  could  be  so,  reason,  experience 
and  history  unite  in  the  prophecy  that  Christianity 
would  evaporate  into  a  philosophical  aspiration  after 
the  divine,  which  to  the  mass  of  mankind  would  be 
but  an  idle  dream.  The  soul  cries  out  not  only  for 
God,  for  the  living  God,  but  for  the  transcendence  of 
the  gulf  between  God  and  man ;  for  the  identification 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  177 

of  God  with  man  as  a  fact,  not  an  ideal  dream,  not  a 
creation  of  the  spiritual  imagination. 

The  objection  of  a  large  area  of  modern  thought  to 
the  historical  faith  of  the  Church  as  one  of  the 
foundations  of  Christianity,  is  substantially  as  follows. 
It  is  maintained  that  there  is  an  inner  contradiction 
in  the  conception  of  faith  as  a  state  of  mind,  in  which 
the  soul  has  found  peace  with  God,  and  love  towards 
all  men,  and  at  the  same  time  having  for  its  object 
the  historical  Christ,  who  lived  and  died  centuries 
ago.  Eeligion  is  a  present  state  of  the  mind  and  the 
heart.  It  is  a  present  reconciliation  with  God,  de¬ 
fined  in  the  consciousness.  To  make  it  depend  upon 
what  took  place  nineteen  centuries  ago,  is  an  un¬ 
natural  burden  for  it  to  bear,  and  is  out  of  essential 
relations  with  it.  It  is  irrational  to  suppose  that  his¬ 
toric  conclusions,  with  reference  to  events  in  a 
remote  past,  should  be  necessary  to  our  relations  to 
God  in  the  present.  That  view  would  cut  off  the 
common  mind,  which  has  no  opportunity  to  reach 
these  historic  conclusions,  and  all  who  are  without  the 
capacity  for  the  investigations  necessary  to  reach 
them,  from  a  knowledge  of  religion.  Therefore  it  is 
said  that  historic  Christianity  is  an  inherent  impos¬ 
sibility,1  because  its  essential  requirement  is  historic 
verification  for  the  mind  and  the  heart  that  receives 

1  Summary  from  Prof.  T.  H.  Green,  Vol.  3,  Miscellaneous  Works, 
pp.  2,  35,  40. 


178  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

it.  It  would  be  the  religion  of  the  aristocracy,  of  the 
few  with  the  time  and  the  capacity  for  investigation. 
It  would  not  be  the  gospel  of  glad  tidings  to  all  peo¬ 
ple.  Notwithstanding  the  surface  attractiveness  of 
this  objection  to  historic  faith,  it  is  clear  to  reflection 
that  it  is  without  point  in  its  supposed  bearing  upon 
Christian  faith.  It  seems  to  be  a  conception  of 
Unitarian  and  of  semi-Unitarian  thought;  but  it  has 
commended  itself  to  many  who  suppose  themselves 
to  be  orthodox  Christians.  It  appears  in  many 
modern  pulpits  with  apparent  innocency  of  what  it 
involves,  and  in  teachings  in  many  of  our  churches,  as 
a  defense  of  Christianity  from  attacks  upon  the  authen¬ 
ticity  and  the  accuracy  of  the  Scripture  records.  They 
say  what  if  it  be  true  if  the  gospel  records  are  of  un¬ 
certain  origin  ?  What  if  we  find  inconsistencies  and 
inaccuracies  in  the  narrative?  We  are  not  dependent 
upon  them.  The  power  of  Christianity  is  a  present 
spiritual  force  manifested  in  the  life  and  experience 
of  believers  ;  manifested  in  its  power  to  redeem  and 
to  save  men ;  in  the  consciousness  of  human  nature 
which  responds  to  it  “  This  is  the  gospel  that  I  need  ; 
this  gospel  meets  the  wants  and  the  yearnings  of  my 
nature  ;  having  that,  we  are  independent  of  historic 
testimony.” 

This  thought  is  the  dominant  idea  of  the  Rev. 
James  Martineau,  by  far  the  most  gifted  writer  in 
the  ranks  of  modern  Unitarianism. 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  179 

I  need  not  mention  Professors  Green  and  Wallace, 
and  writers  in  this  country  who  have  reproduced  their 
thoughts.  It  may  create  astonishment  that  writers 
of  ability,  such  as  those  whom  we  have  mentioned, 
should  disparage,  and  practically  disown,  the  testi¬ 
mony  of  history  of  past  events,  as  having  no  legiti¬ 
mate  place  among  the  foundations  of  religious  belief, 
or  as  factors  moulding  the  religious  ideas  of  men. 
The  idea  of  history,  in  the  light  of  religion,  as  the 
revelation  of  the  purpose  of  God  towards  mankind, 
and  of  man’s  final  destiny ;  that  the  past  has  been  in 
all  the  ages,  under  God's  providence,  working  for  the 
future ;  that  we  of  to-day  are  the  inheritors,  not  only 
of  the  achievements  of  material  civilization,  but  of  all 
those  influences  and  ideas  which  go  to  make  up  our 
moral  and  spiritual  character ;  the  idea,  in  a  word,  of 
heredity  in  the  temporal  life,  and  in  the  religious  life, 
and  of  history  as  a  vehicle  for  and  a  testimony  by 
which  we  realize  that  idea,  appears  to  be  clearer  to 
the  mind  of  this,  than  to  that  of  any  past  age.  That 
it  is  so,  is  but  another  proof  that  the  intelligence  of 
mankind  in  its  highest  development,  is  growing  up  to 
a  recognition  of  the  mind  and  the  words  of  Christ. 
To  cut  ourselves  off  from  the  past,  to  shut  ourselves 
up  within  the  narrow  circle  of  our  own  individual 
emotions  and  experiences,  to  treat  the  past  achieve¬ 
ments  and  records  of  human  life  as  though  they  were 
not,  and  thus  condemn  human  nature  in  each  of  its 


180  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

generations  to  begin  de  novo ;  the  possibility  of  such 
a  process  is  an  hypothesis  adopted  in  support  of  a 
visionary  theory ;  it  is  outside  of  human  nature  as  we 
know  it,  and  it  always  will  be  so.  Christ  says,  “  He 
that  reapeth  receiveth  wages,  and  gathereth  fruit  unto 
life  eternal — that  he  that  soweth,  and  he  that  reapeth 
may  rejoice  together.  For  herein  is  the  saying  true; 
one  soweth  and  another  reapeth.  I  sent  you  to  reap 
that  whereon  ye  bestowed  no  labor ;  other  men 
labored,  and  ye  are  entered  into  their  labors.”1 

Take  any  one  of  the  civic  virtues,  the  most  com¬ 
monly  recognized  even  by  the  ordinary,  untutored 
masses  of  mankind.  The  love  of  country,  for  ex¬ 
ample  ;  no  one  denies  that  it  is  a  virtue ;  no  one 
denies  what  history  so  plainly  teaches,  that  with  hu¬ 
man  nature  as  it  is,  it  is  necessary  to  human  progress, 
and  it  is  the  intention  of  God’s  providence.  Upon 
what  does  it  rest  ?  What  are  the  sources  of  its  in¬ 
spirations  ?  Where  does  the  statesman,  the  orator, 
the  leader  of  a  country’s  cause  turn,  but  to  the  records 
of  history  to  awaken  and  inspire  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people  the  impulse  of  patriotism,  the  willingness  to 
suffer,  and,  if  need  be,  to  die  for  one’s  country  ? 
What  is  the  key  to  the  Old  Testament  story  of  the 
people  of  Israel,  and  their  training  to  transmit  the 
revelation  of  the  true  God  to  mankind  ?  When  they 
wandered  into  disobedience  and  idolatry,  whence,  but 


1  John  4  :  36-38. 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  1S1 

from  the  history  of  their  past,  did  their  inspired 
prophets  and  lawgivers  and  leaders  seek  to  bring 
them  back  again  ?  It  was  the  history,  from  Abra¬ 
ham’s  call  to  the  farewell  of  Moses  upon  the  verge  of 
the  Promised  Land,  which  was  the  very  spring  of 
their  national  life,  the  objective  revelation,  in  fact  and 
event,  of  their  religious  faith.  The  last  words  of 
Moses,  “  Thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way  the  Lord 
thy  God  hath  led  thee,”  were  repeated  by  prophet  and 
lawgiver  and  patriot  for  revival  of  their  courage  in 
the  darkest  days  of  their  adversity,  and  for  a  warning 
to  fidelity  in  religion  and  coherence  in  national  life, 
in  the  days  of  triumph  and  prosperity.  The  appeal  to 
them  from  the  past  wTas  made  to  awaken  in  them  the 
reality  of  God  in  their  own  life  in  the  present.  The 
generation  to  w^hich  these  wonders  had  been  visibly 
present,  had  long  passed  away ;  but  the  history  of  that 
generation  wras  a  living  revelation  and  a  foundation 
of  belief  to  each  generation  to  come.  Is  it  possible  to 
believe  that  we  are  forbidden  to  trust  in  history,  un¬ 
less  we  each  one  for  ourselves  are  historical  students  ? 
The  very  conception  of  God’s  education  of  the  world 
would  be  stultified,  if  no  lesson  from  the  past  be 
allowed  to  enter  into  the  guidance  and  the  inspiration 
of  the  present.  The  historical  element  in  Christian 
faith  is,  in  a  higher  form,  a  method  of  God’s  training 
of  humanity,  manifested  at  every  stage  of  its  temporal 
civilization  and  its  spiritual  progress.  Christ  says, 


182  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

“  Others  have  labored  and  ye  have  entered  into  their 
labors.”  It  is  another  statement  of  the  principle  and 
the  history  of  all  sacrifice.  What  others  have  sown 
in  tears,  we  shall  reap  in  joy,  and  our  labor  in  the 
present  is  planting  for  the  harvest,  it  may  be,  of  a 
far-off  future.  History  is  the  link  which  keeps  living 
the  memory  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  sowers,  with  the 
joy  and  the  gratitude  of  the  reapers.  It  is  the  con¬ 
tinuous  record  of  the  manifestation  of  the  principle  of 
sacrifice.  Seen  in  the  light  of  the  incarnation  and  the 
Cross  of  Christ,  as  tremendous  realities  of  history,  we 
may  interpret  the  meaning  of  all  sacrifice  for  others. 

It  is  through  human  lives,  through  the  action  and 
the  ideas  embodied  in  living  examples,  through  the 
drama  of  life  in  families  and  communities  and  nations, 
that  humanity  learns  its  lessons,  and  embodies  new 
principles  in  permanent  forms.  Why  should  it  be 
otherwise  with  a  revelation  from  God  ? 

General  historical  facts  are  believed  upon  external 
evidence  with  no  internal  evidence  to  answer  and  cor¬ 
roborate  them.  The  victory  of  Hannibal  at  the  battle 
of  Cannas ;  the  discovery  of  America  by  Columbus ; 
the  fact  that  such  a  person  as  Shakespeare  lived ;  all 
the  proof  that  I  have  of  these  is  in  the  nature  of  ex¬ 
ternal  evidence.  There  is  no  internal  verification  in 
my  consciousness  connecting  me  with  these  events. 
They  are  believed  in  upon  the  validity  of  the  external 
testimony  alone.  But  while  Christianity  has  in  the 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  183 


highest  degree  the  same  external  testimony,  which  by 
the  laws  of  the  mind  establishes  historic  verity,  it  has 
in  addition,  an  internal  verification  in  the  form  of  an 
answer  from  my  conscience,  my  reason  and  my  heart. 
I  feel  the  need,  and  Christianity  answers  that  need. 

The  Church  first  gives  me  her  creed,  which  con¬ 
tains  in  simplest  form  the  historic  verities  which  con¬ 
stitute  the  foundation  of  her  faith.  She  requires  me 
to  accept  those  facts,  as  admitted  certainties  of  his¬ 
tory.  She  makes  the  demand  upon  the  learned  and 
the  ignorant.  It  is  a  criterion,  wThere  all  inequalities 
are  on  a  level.  It  presents  facts  which  are  verified  by 
evidence  of  the  same  kind  which  is  required  for  the 
acceptance  of  any  other  fact,  and  which  in  their 
broad  outlines,  no  criticism  contravenes  or  denies. 
This  is  the  minimum  of  her  requirement.  Then  the 
Church  explains  to  me  through  my  natural  guardians, 
my  mother  in  early  childhood  ;  my  pastors  and  teach¬ 
ers  in  early  youth,  the  meaning  of  the  facts.  This 
Jesus,  they  teach  me,  was  sinless,  and  He  died  for 
sinners.  He  was  the  Son  of  God,  and  the  Son  of  man, 
as  no  other  being  in  the  universe  is,  or  can  be.  Hence 
He  is  the  reconciler  of  man  to  God.  His  death  is  the 
atonement  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  On  His  cross 
He  draws  all  men  unto  Him.  They  turn  and  look  to 
Him  and  they  are  changed.  They  can  never  look 
towards  God,  as  they  did  before.  They  can  never 
conceive  of  God  and  feel  towards  Him,  as  they  did  in 


184  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 


the  days  of  darkness,  before  the  dayspring  from  on 
high  arose.  He  has  changed  everything. 

The  Church  tells  me  this  in  her  creed  in  the  outline. 
But  I  want  the  picture  filled  out.  I  need,  for  my 
faith,  to  see  all  of  these  wonderful  things  realized  in  a 
person  and  in  a  life ;  and  the  Church  brings  me  the 
Gospels,  the  history  from  the  very  fountain ;  then  I 
see  for  myself.  The  life  tells  me  that  He  was  a  man, 
but  also  that  He  was  infinitely  more  than  a  man. 
The  cross,  with  the  light  thrown  back  upon  it  from 
the  resurrection,  and  the  resurrection,  with  its  power 
dissipating  the  human  fears  of  His  followers ;  the 
spirit  at  Pentecost  binding  them  together,  and  laying 
the  foundation  of  the  brotherhood  of  the  Church,  that 
centre  of  light  which  is  to  infuse  the  heavenly  leaven 
and  spread  it  through  the  earth,  and  to  bear  that  myste¬ 
rious  cross  to  sweeten  all  the  world’s  bitter  waters  ;  all 
these  are  revelations  of  the  Gospel  story.  The  Church 
which  is  itself  the  creation  of  that  history,  brings  it  to 
me,  and  I  believe,  not  that  her  belief  is  the  cause  of 
my  belief,  any  more  than  the  authority  of  Copernicus 
is  the  cause  of  my  belief  in  the  Copernican  system  of 
the  universe ;  I  see  for  myself,  and  I  cannot  refuse 
my  belief.  The  essential  factor  from  beginning  to 
end  is  belief  in  the  history,  in  the  facts,  without 
which  it  is  inconceivable  that  I  ever  could  have  be¬ 
lieved  at  all. 

The  word  fact,  as  applied  to  the  historic  personality 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  185 

of  Christ  and  to  Christianity  as  historic,  reminds  us  of 
a  saying  of  Lessing,  who  was  one  of  the  great  literary 
land-marks  of  Germany.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Lu¬ 
theran  pastor,  born  in  1729.  German  thought  had 
remained  in  fixed  types  from  the  age  of  the  reforma¬ 
tion.  Lessing  came  to  wake  it  up.  It  is  curious  to 
trace  the  origin  of  waves  of  thought,  either  true  or 
false,  to  some  striking  expression,  or  a  definition,  put¬ 
ting  an  old  truth  in  a  new  light,  or  clothing  a  fallacy 
in  a  plausible  form  which  is  accepted  without  analysis 
upon  the  authority  of  a  great  reputation.  Lessing 
was  doubtless  a  brilliant  mind  for  any  age  ;  but  could 
not  be  called  either  a  philosopher  or  a  poet.  He  was 
rather,  as  has  been  said,  a  “  Guerilla  Chieftain,” 
making  raids  upon  the  seats  of  philosophy,  upon  re¬ 
ligion,  and  the  Church ;  finding  much  exhilaration  in 
the  consternation  produced  by  his  performances.  The 
sensation  awakened  by  Lessing  among  the  educated 
and  the  higher  classes  in  Europe  corresponds  to  that 
produced  among  the  middle  and  lower  classes  in  Eng¬ 
land  and  America  by  books  like  the  “  Christian,”  or 
the  “  Master  Christian,”  attacking  the  Churches,  the 
institutions  of  society,  the  received  opinions  in  morals 
and  religion.  Lessing’s  audience  vras  a  far  higher  one 
than  the  one  referred  to,  and  he  had  the  literary 
power  to  meet  its  demands.  He  delighted  in  war, 
and  it  is  said  in  his  biography  that  from  childhood  he 
had  the  gift  of  satire.  In  his  attitude  to  German  re- 


186  AUTHORITY — THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

ligious  life  he  was  like  the  worldling,  who  takes  keen 
interest  in  the  foibles  of  the  Churches,  and  who  listens 
with  appreciative  attention  to  the  preacher  who  sat¬ 
irizes  the  inconsistencies  and  hypocrisies  of  Chris¬ 
tians.  Lessing’s  main  attack  was  upon  historic  Chris¬ 
tianity.  The  intervals  between  his  literary  activities, 
he  spent  in  the  indulgence  of  the  inveterate  passion 
for  gambling.  In  all  of  his  wanderings  he  seems  to 
have  been  truthful  and  brave.  After  a  cheerless  close 
to  his  life,  he  died  in  1781.  More  than  half  a  century 
later,  Strauss  adopted  Lessing’s  arguments  against  his¬ 
toric  Christianity,  and  applied  them  to  the  four  Gos¬ 
pels  and  the  life  of  Christ.  The  fruit  of  the  seed 
planted  by  Lessing  appears  in  Bauer  and  the  Tubingen 
schools,  both  of  which,  though  discredited,  survive  in 
the  Unitarian  theology  and  in  large  areas  of  tolerated 
criticism  of  the  present  day,  upon  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment.  Martineau,  in  his  “  Seat  of  Authority,”  and 
“  Studies  in  Christianity,”  appears  to  have  imbibed 
many  ideas  from  communion  with  Lessing.  In  the 
human  sphere  Lessing  is  queer  company  for  Marti¬ 
neau  to  keep ;  but  sympathy  in  destructive  criticism 
brings  about  strange  companionships,  as  in  other  en¬ 
thusiasms  not  tempered  by  judgment. 

Martineau  quotes  as  authority  Lessing’s  Axiomata, 
and  sums  them  up  with  approval  as  follows :  “  Be- 

ligious  doctrine  cannot  be  deduced  from  mere  his¬ 
torical  facts  without  a  ^erd/Ja?'?  £.’?  aUo  yivos  vitiating 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  187 

the  whole  process.  Facts ,  indeed,  may  become  the 
proper  ground  of  moral  and  spiritual  faith ;  but  then 
they  must  be  facts  which  come  over  again  and  again, 
and  betray  an  element  that  is  permanent  and  eternal ; 
which  form  part  of  the  experience  and  consciousness 
of  humanity ;  and  ally  themselves  with  the  Divine  by 
not  losing  their  presence  in  the  world.  But  unrejpeated 
facts,  which  limit  themselves  to  a  moment,  which  are 
the  incidents  of  a  single  personality,  are  left  behind 
quite  insulated  in  the  past,  show — were  it  only  by 
your  not  expecting  them  again — that  they  are 
detached  from  the  persistent  and  essential  life  of  the 
universe  and  humanity.  They  are  but  once  and 
away ;  and  least  of  all,  therefore,  can  testify  of  the 
untransitory  and  ever  living.  The  real  can  teach  us 
only  so  far  as  it  has  an  ideal  kernel,  redeeming  it 
from  the  character  of  a  solitary  phenomenon.”  1  Such 
is  Lessing’s  argument,  accepted  by  Dr.  Martineau, 
against  historical  Christianity. 

He  says,  “Facts,  indeed,  may  become  the  proper 
ground  of  moral  and  spiritual  faith  ;  but  then  they 
must  be  facts  which  come  over  again  and  again.” 
They  must  be  repeated.  That  is,  a  fact  which 
appears  once  and  no  more,  is  but  an  isolated  phe¬ 
nomenon  in  the  past.  It  must  occur  again  to-morrow, 
otherwise  its  appearance  to-day  is  without  significance. 
It  is  worthless,  detached  from  all  connection  with  the 

1  Martineau,  Studies  in  Christianity,  Int.,  p.  32. 


188  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

present.  What  then  becomes  of  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual  faith,  which  it  is  admitted  a  fact  may  carry  with 
it  and  plant  in  the  mind  ?  What  becomes  of  the 
truth  of  which  the  fact  is  the  expression  and  the 
external  proof ;  the  mind  believing  it  on  the  evidence 
and  welcoming  it  as  the  answer  to  its  needs  ?  Must 
that  die  too,  if  the  fact  appears  no  more?  Then 
history,  and  all  that  it  means  for  the  education  of  the 
race,  are  futility  and  illusion.  If  moral  and  spiritual 
truth  once  revealed  and  planted  in  the  soul,  survives 
only  so  long  as  the  visible  manifestation  which  con¬ 
stituted  the  vehicle  for  communicating  it  is  in  sight, 
then  indeed  the  order  for  the  divine  training  of  man 
for  his  life  here  and  hereafter  is  subverted ;  and  we 
are  to  walk  by  the  seen  and  not  by  the  unseen,  by 
sight  and  not  by  faith.  The  foundation  of  all 
religion  is  reversed ;  the  moral  and  spiritual  is  only 
a  momentary  impression,  as  transient  as  the  visible 
phenomenon  which  produced  it.  The  things  that  are 
seen  and  that  appear  to  our  senses  every  day,  and 
reveal  their  reality  b}7”  the  constancy  of  their  recur¬ 
rence,  are  the  eternal  things ;  and  the  unseen,  the 
moral,  the  spiritual  are  the  temporal,  the  transient 
things. 

The  miraculous  and  the  supernatural  must  be  con¬ 
tinuous  ;  a  part  of  the  ordinary  system,  otherwise 
they  are  worthless  for  a  revelation.  They  can 
certify  to  nothing  except  by  repetition.  The  resur- 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  189 


rection  must  happen  over  and  over  again.  Miracles 
must  be  constant,  so  that  we  may  expect  them  every 
day,  in  order  that  they  may  be  tested  by  each  gener¬ 
ation  and  each  individual;  otherwise  they  are  dead 
facts  in  the  past.  That  a  thinker  and  a  writer 
capable  of  sustained  eloquence,  like  Dr.  Martineau, 
can  permit  himself  to  imagine  that  these  high  sound¬ 
ing  sentences  are  coherent  reasoning,  is  a  conspicuous 
example  of  eagerness  to  support  a  theory  to  which  the 
mind  has  committed  itself,  blinding  the  quickest 
intellect  to  a  fallacy.  The  Christian  Church  began 
to  be  and  continues  to  rest  upon  the  fact  of  the 
resurrection.  But  for  the  historic  reality  of  that, 
there  would  have  been,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  no 
Church,  and  Christ  would  have  been  a  pathetic  mem¬ 
ory  fading  with  each  successive  generation.  The 
resurrection  of  Christ  brought  life  and  immortality  to 
light ;  and  it  stands  as  a  permanent  light  in  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  mankind,  in  the  hope  that  it  kindles,  in  the 
problems  that  it  solves,  in  the  power  that  it  imparts 
to  Christian  faith  in  overcoming  sin,  the  world  and 
death. 

To  every  hope  and  belief  of  Christian  faith  the 
history  of  the  Gospel  bears  the  same  relation ;  the 
identical  relation  it  bore  to  the  belief  and  the  faith  of 
the  Apostles  and  the  first  believers.  There  are  Chris¬ 
tian  writers,  some  of  much  ability,  who,  in  their  eager¬ 
ness  to  present  the  force  of  the  evidences  of  Christi- 


190  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

anity  from  the  experience  of  believers,  from  the  history 

of  the  achievements  of  the  power  of  the  Gospel  in  the 

world  to  redeem  men  of  every  age  and  generation, 

have  contended,  that,  if  the  life  of  Christ  should  be 

lost,  or  had  been,  and  nothing  was  known  of  Him  but 

that  He  was  a  great  teacher  of  religion,  and  that  He 

had  been  crucified  and  that  He  rose  from  the  dead, 

these  facts  alone  would  have  been  sufficient  to  have 

established  and  maintained  Christianitv.  This  is 

«/ 

hypothesis  based  upon  an  impossible  contingency. 
If  the  Hew  Testament  should  be  lost  to-day,  it  would 
be  found  and  reproduced  to-morrow  from  the  mem¬ 
ories  and  the  experiences  of  millions  and  millions  of 
believers  all  over  the  world.  It  could  be  a  hundred 
times  reproduced  from  the  literature  of  all  ages  and 
all  languages  into  which  it  has  been  woven.  The 
supposition  is  unreal,  because  the  experience  is  the 
product  of  the  historic  faith.  The  history  from  the 
very  first  was  the  basis  of  the  experience  and  the  faith 
of  the  Church. 

It  has  been  said  that  men  believed  in  Christ  and 
found  God  in  Him  before  any  of  the  Gospels  were 
written;  and  that  has  been  alleged  to  prove  that 
Christianity  is  independent  of  historic  records  and  in¬ 
spired  writings.  It  is  true  that  thousands  of  men  of 
all  races  believed  in  Christ  before  any  of  the  inspired 
writings  of  the  Hew  Testament  were  given  to  the 
world ;  but  all  the  evidence  proves,  without  shadow 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  191 

of  doubt,  that  from  the  day  of  Pentecost  to  the  time 
when  the  first  Gospel  was  written,  the  facts  of  Christ’s 
life  and  ministry,  through  which  believers  formed  a 
conception  of  His  character  and  His  wonderful  per¬ 
sonality,  were  known  to  the  humblest  Christian  dis¬ 
ciple.  St.  Luke  in  the  introduction  to  his  Gospel,  re¬ 
fers  to  many  narratives  that  were  current  in  the 
Churches.  As  far  as  specimens  are  given  in  the 
Gospel,  the  tenor  of  the  Apostolic  preaching  was  the 
presentation  of  the  personal  Christ  to  their  hearers. 
How  could  it  have  been  otherwise  ?  Is  it  possible  to 
suppose  that  when  they  preached  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Saviour  of  mankind,  dying  upon  a  cross  to  reconcile 
man  to  God,  that  their  wondering  hearers  would  not 
have  questioned  them  as  to  who  Christ  was,  and  what 
He  did,  and  said,  and  how  He  lived  among  men  ? 
When  St.  Paul  preached  that  in  Christ  Jesus  there  is 
neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  barbarian,  Cythian,  bond  nor 
free,  but  that  all  these  sundered  nations  are  one  in 
Him ;  He  is  the  head  of  the  great  family ;  His  love 
passes  knowledge  and  knows  no  bounds;  would  they 
not  have  asked  for  living  examples  of  this  living 
sympathy  ?  Would  He  not  have  told  them  the  narra¬ 
tive  of  the  woman  of  Samaria,  or  the  parable  of  the 
man  who  fell  among  thieves ;  of  the  lost  sheep ;  of 
the  Prodigal  Son  and  all  of  those  saying  and  deeds  of 
His,  embodying  the  idea  of  man  as  man,  of  the  soul 
and  of  its  worth  in  God’s  eyes?  How  natural  for 


192  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

them  to  ask,  “  How  could  He  be  like  us  and  yet  be 
sinless?”  Would  the  Apostles  have  refused  an 
answer?  In  teaching  the  Lord’s  prayer,  would  not 
they  have  explained  to  their  heathen  hearers  that  the 
prayer  was  for  the  disciples,  and  not  for  Christ  Him¬ 
self?  He  taught  them  to  pray  to  God  to  forgive 
them  their  sins ;  but  He  never  prayed  to  God  to  for¬ 
give  His  sins.  He  had  no  sins  to  be  forgiven.  Ho 
word  of  His  ever  breathed  the  faintest  shadow  of  the 
memory  of  transgression.  His  consciousness  knew  no 
cloud  of  sin.  He  was  one  with  God.  He  said,  I  do 
My  Father’s  will  perfectly.  Sinlessness  was  a  moral 
and  a  spiritual  miracle  greater  than  any  physical 
miracle  could  have  been. 

The  belief  in  His  Divine  nature  grew  out  of  the 
picture  of  His  character ;  His  words  and  deeds  as  re¬ 
vealed  to  them  by  the  eye-witnesses,  the  Apostles, 
whom  He  commissioned  to  go  forth  and  preach  the 
Gospel.  They  had  the  historic  Gospel,  perhaps  with 
more  vividness  than  we,  to  whom  it  has  grown  com¬ 
mon  by  familiarity.  The  argument  then,  for  the  hy¬ 
pothesis  that  Christianity  could  dispense  with  the 
historic  faith,  because  the  first  Christians  had  no 
written  Gospels,  is  fanciful  and  untrue.  The  historic 
faith  was  in  reality  the  sum  and  substance  of  their 
Christianity. 

That  the  experience  of  the  great  body  of  Christians 
in  all  ages,  independent  of  the  historic  revelation  of  the 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  193 


New  Testament,  would  furnish  a  support  to  Christi¬ 
anity  even  if  the  Gospels  and  epistles  were  lost,  con¬ 
tains  the  illusion  arising  from  the  neglect  of  the  vital 
connection  between  experience  and  the  historic  faith. 
Experience  is  a  powerful  confirmation  and  com¬ 
mentary  upon  the  historic  revelation,  but  the  revela¬ 
tion  itself  is  the  spring  from  which  the  experience  of 
each  generation  and  each  individual  is  refreshed  and 
sustained.  It  is  perennially  original.  It  is  a  present 
reality  to  every  soul  that  is  born  into  the  kingdom  of 
Christ.  There  is  truth  in  Lessing’s  idea,  but  not  in 
the  sense  in  which  he  meant  it  as  an  argument  against 
historic  Christianity.  He  says  that  “  A  Christianity, 
once  incorporated  into  the  very  substance  of  history 
and  civilization,  seated  deep  in  human  thought  and 
developed  into  literature,  law  and  life,  subsists  inde¬ 
pendently  of  critical  questions,  and  is  with  us,  not  as 
the  contingent  vapor  that  a  wind  may  arise  to  blow 
away,  but  as  the  cloud  that  has  dropped  the  rain  and 
mingled  with  the  roots  of  things.” 1  This  is  truth 
eloquently  put ;  but  as  an  argument  against  historic 
Christianity,  it  veils  the  fallacy  that  effects  are  inde¬ 
pendent  of  their  causes.  The  “rain  that  mingles 
with  the  roots  of  things  ”  is  not  dead  history,  but  a 
living  Christ  made  known  to  believers  and  to  the 
world  in  the  continuous  vitality  of  the  authority  of 
the  facts  of  the  Gospel.  If  Christianity  is  undermined 

1  Martineau,  quoting  from  Lessing,  p.  34,  Studies  of  Christianity. 


194  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

at  the  foundations,  the  regenerating  springs  which 
supply  the  literature,  the  law  and  the  life  of  humanity 
are  progressively  weakened,  and  finally  fail  alto¬ 
gether.  Christian  ideas  which  have  changed  the 
world,  are  not  self-evolving  and  self-sustaining  cut  off 
from  the  Divine  sources  from  which  they  originally 
sprung,  and  by  wrhich  their  strength  is  continually 
renewed.  Their  energy  wanes,  and  they  are  pressed 
back  by  the  antagonism  of  the  world  and  by  the 
forces  of  sin  and  evil,  with  only  human  nature  to  de¬ 
pend  upon.  The  retrogressions  of  the  Church  and 
the  world  are  coincident  with  the  corruptions  of  the 
historic  faith  of  Christianity.  The  reformations  and 
the  advances  are  the  results  of  the  revivals  of  that 
faith. 

The  words  of  Professor  Green,  the  leading  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  Neo-Hegelian  School,  referred  to  on 
a  previous  page,  involve  the  same  fallacy  as  pointed 
out  in  the  Axiomata  of  Lessing,  upon  which  Dr. 
Martineau  builds  his  theory  of  authority  in  religion. 

The  principle  of  the  authority  of  the  Christian  Gos¬ 
pels  as  contained  in  the  New  Testament,  must  be  ap¬ 
plied  to  every  other  theory  which  claims  to  be  heard, 

whether  as  confirmatory  or  as  a  substitute. 

«/ 

The  experience  of  the  Church  is  justly  held  as  an 
authority,  both  for  the  doctrinal  and  the  ethical  truths 
of  Christianity  ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  it  is 
so  as  confirmatory  of  the  historic  faith  of  the  New 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  195 

Testament.  The  living  truth  of  this  faith  has  fed  and 
nurtured  the  experience.  Dr.  Stanton,  of  Cambridge, 
in  his  valuable  contribution  to  the  subject,  refers  to 
the  position  of  the  consentient  testimony  of  Christian 
experience,  as  a  powerful  confirmatory  authority  of 
the  objective  truths  of  revelation.  He  says,  “  If  re¬ 
ligious  knowledge  is  to  exist  objectively  at  all,  and 
not  relatively  to  the  individual  consciousness  alone, 
the  principle  of  authority  must  enter  as  it  does  in 
every  other  kind  of  knowledge.”  Again  he  says, 
“  Our  weak  faith  may  be  permitted  to  look  through 
the  eyes  of  some  strong  soul ;  ”  and  “  It  may  thereby 
gain  a  sense  of  the  certainty  of  things  which  before 
we  had  not,  and  which  we  lose  when  we  return  within 
ourselves.”  “  The  volume  of  the  spiritual  experience 
of  mankind  is  a  fact  vastly  greater  than  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  a  single  individual.”  If,  age  after  age,  I  find 
Christian  men  and  women  of  different  races,  diverse 
ecclesiastical  organizations,  environments  and  civiliza¬ 
tions,  confessing  the  same  faith,  relying  upon  the  same 
atonement  for  the  forgiveness  of  their  sins,  trusting 
in  the  grace  of  an  ever  present  Saviour  for  strength 
to  stand  against  the  opposing  forces  of  evil  and  testi¬ 
fying  to  His  faithfulness  to  all  of  His  promises,  as 
realized  in  their  experience,  their  very  differences 
emphasize  their  spiritual  unity  and  present  an  im¬ 
pressive  confirmation  of  the  adaptation  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  to  the  ultimate  needs  of  the  human  soul. 


196  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

The  unity  is  far  more  wonderful  as  a  confirmation  of 
the  faith,  because  it  is  unity  under  diversity ;  it  is 
vital  agreement  under  external  differences ;  it  is  the 
spirit  transcending  the  letter. 

We  accept  the  testimony  of  the  early  fathers  as 
witnesses  to  the  facts  and  to  the  consciousness  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Their  teaching,  their  criticism  of 
scripture,  their  development  of  Christian  ideas,  we  are 
at  liberty  to  accept  or  reject  in  the  light  of  wider  op¬ 
portunities  than  they  could  have  possessed.  But  when 
we  come  to  the  experiences  of  a  Christian  soul  in  the 
struggles  with  sin,  in  the  fiery  trials  of  suffering,  with 
the  strength  of  a  faith  that  overcomes  the  world,  this 
is  sacred.  It  is  the  more  wonderful  the  farther  we 
are  removed  from  them  in  the  external  conditions  of 
life  and  education.  We  feel  there  the  thrill  of  kin¬ 
ship  that  unifies  variations  and  transcends  time.  The 
consensus  of  experience  is  far  more  wonderful  and 
real  than  the  consensus  of  opinion. 

I  agree  with  a  writer  to  whom  I  owe  much  of  spir¬ 
itual  help  and  illuminative  thought,  the  late  Dr.  Dale 
of  England,  when  he  says,  “  The  ‘  Confessions  *  of 
Augustine  are  to  me  of  more  authority  than  his  theo¬ 
logical  treatises.  Bunyan’s  ‘  Grace  Abounding,’  is  of 
more  authority  than  ‘  Calvin’s  Institutes.’  I  believe 
in  the  inspiration  of  the  Church,  and  I  find  that  in¬ 
spiration  in  its  life.” 1  Such  is  the  relation  of  the  ex- 

1  Christian  Doctrine,  R.  W.  Dale,  LL.  D.,  p.  308. 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  197 

perience  of  the  Church,  the  great  cloud  of  witnesses 
of  all  ages,  to  the  historic  faith  of  Christianity.  The 
heart  of  that  testimony  is  the  affirmation  that  Christ 
reveals,  in  His  personality,  the  divine  and  the  human  ; 
that  He  unites  God  and  man.  As  we  turn  from  the 
experience  of  the  Church  to  the  contact  of  the  his¬ 
toric  faith  with  thought  and  critical  intelligence,  we 
find  the  same  recognition  of  the  central  position  of 
the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God.  Beside  the  great 
controversies  which  led  the  Church  to  form  her  creeds 
during  the  first  four  centuries,  speculations  upon  this 
central  truth  of  Christianity  have  never  ceased,  and 
perhaps  never  will,  even  within  the  pale  of  orthodoxy. 
Theories  modifying  and  explaining  the  mystery  of  the 
union  between  the  divine  and  the  human  have  at¬ 
tracted  every  age  of  Christian  thought.  And  that  it 
is  so  is  another  proof  of  the  consciousness  of  the 
Church  that  the  incarnation  is  the  authoritative  and 
central  revelation  of  Christianity.  In  our  own  age,  as 
in  other  forms  in  the  past,  we  have  the  controversy  in 
theology  and  criticism  over  the  humiliation  of  Christ. 
What  it  means,  its  significance  in  relation  to  the 
person  of  Christ  as  divine  and  human. 

The  theory  of  the  Kenosis,  which  has  engaged  so 
many  devout  minds  and  which  in  some  respects  ap¬ 
peals  to  our  sympathies,  is  an  effort  to  reconcile  sup¬ 
posed  contradictions  in  the  conception  of  the  incar¬ 
nation.  The  doctrine  referred  to  has  been  held  in  our 


198  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

time  by  many  devout  scholars.  It  is  the  doctrine  that 
God  in  Christ,  to  become  incarnate,  divested  Himself 
of  some  of  His  infinite  attributes,  in  order  that  He 
might  become  capable  of  that  experience  of  suffering 
and  of  sympathy  with  humanity,  which  in  the  essen¬ 
tial  fulness  of  His  divinity,  He  was  not  capable  of. 
The  controversy  arose,  and  continues  over  the  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  scripture  expressions  describing  the 
humiliation  of  Christ.  “  He  emptied  Himself.”  “  He 
was  rich,  but  for  our  sakes  became  poor.,,  The  Son  of 
God  limited  Himself,  left  behind  Him  His  infinite  at¬ 
tributes,  in  order  to  become  incarnate.  That  theory 
of  the  humiliation  of  Christ  is  adopted  by  able  minds, 
who  are  as  loyal  as  any  to  the  fundamentals  of  Chris¬ 
tianity,  under  the  impression  that  they  are  only  yield¬ 
ing  some  of  the  speculative  outworks,  in  order  to  hold 
more  firmly  the  citadel  of  Christian  faith ;  but  they 
have  failed  to  see  the  objections  to  which  the  view  is 
open,  and  the  conclusious  to  which  it  may  be  pressed. 

I  think  it  may  be  said,  with  truth,  that  a  large  ma¬ 
jority  of  the  abler  theologians  are  against  the  theory, 
as  propounded  by  its  ingenious  advocates ;  and  that 
the  soundest  critical  scholars  have  interpreted  these 
few  expressions  of  St.  Paul  as  revealing  a  wider  and  a 
far  deeper  conception  of  the  incarnation  than  this 
theory,  involving  metaphysical  contradictions,  which 
seem  to  be  fatal  to  its  acceptance.  If  the  Son  of 
God,  in  order  to  become  incarnate,  laid  aside  His 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  199 


divine  nature,  and  if  it  was  necessary  that  He  should 
do  so,  then  the  divine  nature  did  not  suffer,  nor  did  it 
enter  into  a  human  experience,  nor  did  it  link  itself 
with  human  nature.  Again,  it  may  be  said  that  when 
the  Son  of  God  is  supposed  to  have  parted  with  His 
omnipotence,  in  order  to  enter  into  a  finite  nature,  and 
to  share  its  weakness  and  its  limitations,  we  are  using 
language  without  attaching  meaning  to  the  words  we 
employ.  The  power  that  limits  itself  expresses,  in 
the  very  act  of  self-limitation,  the  highest  power  of 
which  it  is  capable.  In  repressing  itself  it  remains  in 
its  fulness  in  the  very  act  of  self-repression.  A  power 
that  represses  itself  is  greater  than  the  power  that  is 
repressed.  What  meaning  can  we  attach  to  the  prop¬ 
osition  as  applied  to  ourselves,  that  by  an  act  of  our 
will  we  can  resolve  to  part  with  knowledge  in  our 
possession  ;  that  is,  to  be  ignorant  of  what  we  know  ? 
If  by  an  effort  of  my  will  I  seek  to  blot  out  of  my 
memory  a  fact  or  event  that  I  know,  the  result  of  that 
effort  is  simply  to  revivify  the  picture,  and  to  intensify 
the  consciousness  of  my  knowledge  of  it.  And  again, 
if  it  was  necessary  for  the  incarnation  that  the  Son  of 
God  should  have  laid  aside  any  of  His  divine  attri¬ 
butes,  then  why  may  it  not  be  pressed  to  the  full 
length  of  Unitarianism  and  say  that  it  was  necessary 
for  him  to  lay  aside  all,  for  all  the  elements  of  the 
divine  nature  are  infinite,  and  human  nature  as  finite, 
is  inadequate  for  the  accommodation  of  all  or  any  one 


200  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

of  them.  If  this  be  the  alternative,  those  who  hold 
the  theory  are  confronted  by  the  question,  in  what 
does  a  personality,  who  has  parted  with  all  of  his 
Divine  attributes,  differ  from  an  ordinary  human  be¬ 
ing  in  weakness  and  finiteness  ?  If  these  and  other 
objections  are  fatal  to  the  theory,  we  may  rest  assured 
that  the  judgment,  the  illative  sense  and  experience  of 
the  Christian  Church  will  recognize  in  it  a  tendency, 
not  only  to  modify,  but  to  exclude  the  Divine  nature 
from  the  conception  of  the  incarnation.  The  fate  of 
all  such  theories  is  at  last  to  be  determined  by  their 
relation  to  the  central  authority  of  Christianity,  as 
revealed  in  the  New  Testament,  and  believed  in  by 
the  Church  as  the  Divine  and  human  Saviour.  Specu¬ 
lative  schemes  may  be  entertained  as  tentative  resolu¬ 
tions  of  supposed  contradictions,  which  may  help  the 
faith  of  those  who  entertain  them ;  but  to  the 
preacher,  who  has  upon  him  the  responsibility  of 
teaching  the  Gospel,  speculations  upon  such  themes 
should  be  held  in  suspense. 

There  are  great  certainties  which  we  are  to  teach 
and  to  preach  to  the  world.  To  imperil  these  certain¬ 
ties  by  resting  them  upon  uncertainties;  to  identify 
revelation  and  the  Church  with  the  authority  of  our 
own  questionable  theories,  is  an  error  from  which 
Christian  wisdom  and  humility  alone  can  defend  us. 
There  are  many  theories  in  the  Kenotic  controversy 
which  may  be  tentatively  held  as  provisional  efforts  at 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  201 


an  explanation  of  the  supposed  contradictions  involved 
in  the  idea  of  the  incarnation.  But  they  must  be 
held  only  as  efforts  by  earnest  thinkers,  to  help  us  to 
understand  a  hard  problem  for  the  strengthening  of 
our  faith.  One  danger,  especially  with  young  minds, 
is  that  theories  are  mistaken  for  revelations,  and  as¬ 
sume  a  fictitious  authority  wThich,  when  the  mind 
once  commits  itself  to  them,  it  is  difficult  to  shake 
off  or  to  judge  dispassionately.  The  first  question  to 
be  investigated  in  all  such  speculations,  is  how  far 
Scripture  intends  us  to  go ;  what  does  it  intend  us  to 
know ;  and  at  what  point  is  our  reason  and  our  faith 
to  rest.  The  great  certainty,  the  authoritative  rela¬ 
tion  is  the  unity  of  the  person  of  our  Lord ;  the  reality 
of  His  humanity  ;  the  reality  of  His  divinity  and  the 
voluntary  sacrifice  of  love  that  He  rendered  for  the 
world  in  His  incarnation,  His  life,  and  His  death. 
Any  theory  that  tends  to  rob  us  of  the  central  truth 
of  the  incarnation,  that  in  Christ  dwells  all  the  fulness 
of  the  Godhead  bodily,  will  be  weighed  in  the  balances 
of  the  faith  and  the  judgment  of  the  Church,  guided 
by  Scripture  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  will  be  found 
wanting.  We  have  reached  the  conclusion,  then,  that 
historic  faith  and  the  experience  of  the  Christian 
world  testify  to  Christ  as  the  seat  of  authority  in 
Christianity. 

It  remains  to  ask  what  answer  has  the  Church 
given  to  the  question  asked  of  the  Pharisees,  “  What 


202  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

think  ye  of  Christ  ?  ”  The  Church  is  the  organized 
brotherhood  of  Christians,  whose  function  it  is  through 
ministers,  and  sacraments,  through  teaching  and  wor¬ 
ship  to  bear  the  historic  message  to  the  world ;  to 
gather  and  to  feed  the  flock  of  Christ.  Outside  of 
these  direct  functions  of  the  Church  and  the  limits 
prescribed  by  them,  history  is  continually  weighing 
individual  opinions  and  variations  of  thought  and 
separating  the  transient  from  the  permanent.  The 
function  of  the  Church  individually  and  collectively  is 
to  defend  and  to  hold  the  faith.  Individual  opinions 
are  left  to  the  sifting  processes  of  the  consentient 
judgments  of  Christian  society.  Our  little  systems 
have  their  day,  and  history  consigns  some  to  oblivion, 
and  from  others  rescues  grains  of  truth  and  plants 
them  in  the  soil  to  grow  for  the  future.  Controversies 
in  theology  find  their  parallels  in  the  secular  life  of 

this  world.  Political  and  social  theories  in  free  so- 

« 

ciety  exhibit  greater  variety  than  religious  opinions, 
and  they  also  illustrate  the  law  of  the  sifting  process 
of  the  general  intelligence  of  mankind,  the  consensus 
of  public  sentiment.  The  party  politician  presents 
his  platform  to  the  people  as  the  issue  involving  the 
nation’s  destiny.  His  party  is  defeated  at  the  polls ; 
but  the  government  moves  on  and  liberty  still  lives. 
The  reputation  and  the  influence  of  individuals  illus¬ 
trate  this  same  principle.  The  list  of  great  names  in 
a  community,  or  a  nation,  in  one  generation  is  subject 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  203 


to  revision  in  the  next,  and  people  live  to  see  the  idols 
of  their  youth  shattered,  and  reputations  discredited. 
Theodore  Parker  was  once  an  idol  in  New  England 
as  a  preacher,  and  among  the  imperfectly  educated 
classes,  as  a  philosopher.  The  leading  doctrine  of  his 
philosophy  was  the  sufficiency  of  human  nature  to 
serve  God  without  Divine  help,  and  to  find  God  with¬ 
out  the  aid  of  revelation.  In  a  valuable  English 
book,  the  most  recent  authority  upon  the  history  of 
religious  philosophy,  and  with  broadest  sympathies 
for  merit  wherever  found,  a  brief  criticism  of  Parker 
closes  in  these  words,  “  The  confidence  of  one  who 
was  an  orator,  rather  than  a  thinker,  marks  all  that 
he  says,  and  accounts  at  once  for  the  extent  of  his  in¬ 
fluence  in  his  lifetime,  and  its  cessation  when  his  per¬ 
sonality  was  removed.”1 

The  controversies  of  the  Christian  Church  assume  a 
position  of  importance  and  of  dignity  in  a  far  higher 
sphere  than  these  ephemeral  controversies  of  in¬ 
dividuals,  of  coteries,  or  of  parties  in  the  irresponsible 
world  of  debatable  opinions. 

The  Church  feels  her  responsibility  to  her  Lord, 
and  to  the  world  to  which  she  carries  His  message. 
The  most  perilous  period  of  her  history  extends  from 
the  fourth  century  to  the  last  part  of  the  fifth.  Pro¬ 
fessor  Orr,  of  Scotland,  in  his  valuable  book  “  The 
Christian  View  of  God  and  the  World,”  referring  to 

1  Caldecott,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  1901,  p.  100. 


204  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

the  question  of  the  person  of  Christ  as  it  appears  in 
Church  history,  says,  “  The  first  essential  service 
which  history  has  rendered  us  has  been  the  elimina¬ 
tion  of  intermediate  views,  in  making  it  clear,  as  a 
first  alternative,  that  the  real  issue  on  this  question  is 
between  a  truly  divine  Christ  and  pure  humanitarian- 
ism.  Intermediate  views  on  Christ’s  person  have 
from  time  to  time  arisen,  and  still  go  on  arising,  in 
the  Church ;  but,  like  the  intermediate  species  of 
plants  and  animals  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us  of,  which  are 
invariably  driven  to  the  wall  in  the  struggle  for  ex¬ 
istence,  they  have  never  been  able  to  survive.” 1 

The  statement  is  illustrated  in  many  of  those  early 
controversies,  when  the  young  mind  of  the  Christian 
Church  was  just  grappling  with  its  problems,  and 
measuring  its  strength  with  the  antagonisms  of  pagan 
philosophies.  The  most  familiar  of  these  is  the  Arian 
controversy  upon  the  person  of  Christ.  Arius  was 
condemned  at  the  Council  of  Hicasa,  because  his 
fantastic  conception  of  the  person  of  Christ  found  no 
ground  to  stand  upon  in  the  Hew  Testament.  The 
consciousness  and  the  heart  of  the  Church  turned 
from  it,  and  shook  it  off  as  false  and  destructive  of 
Christianity.  Arius  made  Christ  a  creature ;  and  if 
so,  God  was  as  far  from  man  as  ever.  He  had  not 
entered  into  humanity ;  He  had  not  taken  humanity 
into  Himself.  The  controversy  was  prolonged  for 

1  Dr.  Orr,  “  Christian  View  of  God  and  the  World,”  p.  44. 


AUTHORITY — THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  205 


many  years  after  the  Hicasan  Council ;  but  as  each 
phase  of  the  Arian  conception  arose,  the  Church  con¬ 
demned  it  and  laid  it  aside.  The  Council  of  Chalcedon, 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  after,  formed  the 
full  creed  which  is  now  practically  the  creed  of 
Christendom.  In  places  of  worship  all  over  the 
world,  upon  the  great  days  of  the  ecclesiastical  year, 
we  may  hear  from  all  races,  in  divers  tongues,  the  great 
confession  of  faith,  “  I  believe  in  one  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God ;  begotten  of 
His  Father  before  all  worlds,  God  of  God,  light  of 
light,  very  God  of  very  God ;  begotten,  not  made ; 
being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father ;  by  whom  all 
things  were  made.” 

Froude,  as  quoted  by  Canon  Gore,  writes  of 
Thomas  Carlyle,  “He  made  one  remark  which  is 
worth  recording.  In  earlier  years  he  had  spoken 
contemptuously  of  the  Athanasian  controversy ;  of 
the  Christian  world  torn  in  pieces  over  a  diphthong ; 
he  would  ring  the  changes  in  broad  Annandale  on  the 
Homoousion  and  the  Homoiousion.  He  now  told  me 
that  he  perceived  Christianity  itself  had  been  at  stake. 
If  Arius  had  won,  it  would  have  dwindled  away  to  a 
legend.”  Judging  from  Carlyle’s  writings,  it  must 
have  been  rare  that  he  confessed  to  himself  or  to  others 
a  failure  to  see  to  the  bottom  of  things ;  he  was  mis¬ 
taken  in  this  judgment.  If  the  Church  had  failed  at 
Hicaea  to  vindicate  the  historic  faith,  she  would  have 


206  AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 


rallied,  and  the  battle  would  have  been  fought  over 
again  and  won.  The  phrase,  “  dwindling  to  a  legend,” 
has  prophetic  significance.  The  religious  bodies  of 
Christendom,  which  have  modified  and  finally  ex¬ 
cluded  divinity  from  the  conception  of  the  person  of 
Christ,  have  gravitated  towards  humanitarianism  as 
the  truth  has  been  obscured ;  and  with  them  Chris¬ 
tianity  has  literally  dwindled  to  a  legend.  Their 
power  as  Churches  and  their  hold  upon  human  life 
have  progressively  failed.  Their  religion  has  evapo¬ 
rated  into  a  vague  philosophy ;  their  numbers  have 
fallen  away  and  they  are  being  left  to  themselves, 
away  from  the  forces  that  move  the  world  ;  powerless 
to  help  men  ;  without  appreciable  influence  upon  their 
generation.  This  is  the  solemn  lesson  of  history ; 
doubtless  it  will  be  repeated  in  other  forms.  The 
generations  of  ecclesiastical  life  which  are  before  our 
young  men,  who  with  their  talents,  their  gifts,  their 
faith  and  their  hope,  are  preparing  to  enter  the 
ministry  of  the  Church,  may  find  struggles  as  arduous, 
and  trials  to  faith  more  searching  than  those  which 
clouded  the  early  morning  of  Christianity;  but  the 
results  will  always  be  the  same.  Human  nature,  self- 
confident,  self-centred,  possessed  by  the  world  spirit, 
turns  from  the  incarnation,  the  manifestation  of  God  in 
the  flesh ;  it  is  the  last  thing  it  will  believe.  It  will  say 
it  in  a  creed.  It  will  worship  it  in  a  litany ;  but  that  is 
only  a  courtesy  to  religion,  and  an  imagination  of 


AUTHORITY— THE  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST  207 

God  afar  off.  To  really  believe  in  the  incarnation  is 
bringing  God  too  close.  The  world  spirit  says,  this 
world  is  our  own  territory.  We  do  not  want  it  in- 
vaded.  God  must  keep  in  His  place  and  we  are  will¬ 
ing  to  acknowledge  His  greatness  and  glory  afar  off, 
whatever  that  may  amount  to.  But  a  God  who  links 
Himself  to  my  nature;  an  incarnate  Saviour,  who 
claims  to  rule  my  conscience,  my  thoughts,  my  daily 
life,  my  business,  my  family,  my  politics,  my  money, 
my  all,  the  world  cannot  stand  this.  It  is  the  reality 
of  Christianity,  and  between  this  and  the  world  spirit 
in  human  nature,  conflict  is  inevitable  ;  but  the  result 
will  always  be  the  same.  Jesus  Christ  uniting  God 
and  man  will  be  more  and  more  clearly  seen  as  this 
authority ;  the  King  of  men ;  the  central  light,  by 
which  the  Word  of  God  in  the  Bible  is  interpreted, 
testified  to  by  the  ever  deepening  experience  and 
consciousness  of  the  Church  of  the  living  God,  the 
pillar  and  ground  of  the  truth. 


AUTHOKITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHEIST 


LECTUEE  VI 


AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

Principles  discussed  in  Lecture  Y.  Controversies  arising  from  attempt 
to  exclude  the  human  nature  of  Christ.  Disappointment  of 
Christians  of  second  and  third  centuries  in  hope  of  millennium. 
Influence  of  the  pagan  philosophy  affirming  the  essential  im¬ 
purity  of  matter  and  of  the  origin  of  evil  in  the  body.  Cause  of 
asceticism.  Docetic  theology  foundation  of  the  denial  of  the 
humanity  of  Christ.  Philosophy  of  Mariolatry  and  Saint  Worship. 
St.  Augustine.  His  attack  upon  Manichseism.  Christianity  reve¬ 
lation  of  sacredness  of  common  life  and  of  essential  innocence  of 
the  body.  Salvation  in  Christ  through  natural  human  relations, 
not  by  their  extinction.  Council  of  Constantinople.  Rejection 
of  the  Appollonarian  view  and  of  all  phases  of  the  Docetic 
theories.  Harnack  on  council  of  Constantinople.  Sneers  at 
Christian  dogma  betray  imperfect  education.  The  lowest  con¬ 
ception  of  Church  authority.  The  councils  did  not  add  to  reve¬ 
lation,  only  excluded  error  and  defended  the  truth.  The  heresies 
attempted  explanations  of  mysteries.  The  councils  saw  in  the 
explanations,  substitutes  which  would  destroy  the  historic  faith, 
and  rejected  them.  Relation  of  reason  to  authority  in  these  con¬ 
troversies.  Heresies  adjudicated  by  comparing  them  with  reve¬ 
lation  and  the  historic  faith  in  the  incarnation.  Councils  did  not 
claim  infallibility.  Used  reason  and  appealed  to  the  reason  of 
the  Church.  View  of  the  necessity  of  organic  unity  of  Christian 
Church  upon  passages  as  Ephesians  4:  5.  The  facts  of  human 
life  seem  to  disappoint  the  expectation.  General  tendency  to  ex¬ 
aggerate  differences  to  the  neglect  of  agreements  in  social,  political 
and  religious  life.  The  agreements  greater  than  differences.  All 
great  churches  unite  in  the  Apostles’  and  the  Nicene  Creeds.  Ex¬ 
ceptional  position  of  our  own  Church  to  represent  the  spirit  of 
unity  in  the  Christian  world.  The  Church  greater  than  theolo¬ 
gians  or  theologies.  Significance  of  the  creeds  in  the  Church.  Is 
theology  a  science  ?  Definition  of  evolution  as  scientific  term. 

211 


212  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


Contradiction  involved  in  attempt  to  apply  scientific  evolution  to 
Christianity.  Christian  progress  in  life  and  thought  towards 
Christ  and  realization  of  His  spirit  in  humanity.  Professor 
Pfleirderer’s  “Evolution  of  Religion.’ ’  The  decline  of  certain 
theological  systems  coincident  with  growth  of  Christian  thought 
towards  Christ.  Illustration  from  science  and  nature.  Dr. 
Sabatier  on  the  creeds.  His  illustration  of  need  of  amendment  in 
Apostles’  Creed.  Confusion  of  thought  in  his  position.  Great 
dangers  in  modern  churches  not  anthropomorphic  religion,  but 
rejection  of  the  supernatural,  by  their  ministers,  the  teachers  of 
the  people.  Position  of  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  different  from 
that  of  laymen  who  have  lost  their  faith  in  their  creeds.  Curious 
incident  in  the  life  of  Renan.  Bernez,  the  Jewish  rationalist,  and 
the  Ethics  of  Conformity.  Ethical  position  of  a  minister  using  his 
office  to  destroy  the  creed  of  his  Church.  Conclusion. 


It  will  be  remembered  that  the  subject  of  authority 
in  religion,  as  we  have  considered  it,  has  not  involved 
the  question  as  to  whether  it  has  been  committed  to  a 
visible  Church,  in  the  sense  that  within  the  bounds  of 
the  organism  the  authority  may  be  supposed  to  exist, 
and  beyond  those  bounds  its  validity  may  be  denied. 
It  is  not  the  esse  of  the  Church  on  the  one  hand,  or 
the  bene  esse  on  the  other,  or  any  question  involved 
in  the  science  of  ecclesiastical  polity.  That  subject, 
however  important  it  may  be  considered  to  be,  has 
no  necessary  connection  with  the  principle  we  seek  to 
define. 

We  have  been  considering  the  historic  faith  in  its 
relation  to  Christ,  and  the  Church  in  its  consciousness, 
its  experience  and  its  organic  expressions  as  to  what 
that  Christianity  is  which  is  confided  to  it  to  bear  to 
the  world.  Our  view  reveals  the  Church  of  Christ  of 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  213 


all  ages  as  a  kingdom  whose  authority  to  rule  sits 
upon  an  invisible  throne,  but  is  ever  present  by  the 
effluence  of  His  Spirit ;  of  a  body  with  a  head  who  is 
invisible ;  of  a  family,  a  part  of  which  is  on  earth  and 
a  part  in  the  unseen  world,  bound  together  by  ties, 
possible  to  no  human  relation,  by  Him  for  whom  they 
are  all  named. 

Christ,  as  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  must  be  the 
centre  and  the  authority  in  His  own  religion ;  there¬ 
fore,  with  Strauss,  we  may  hold,  that  if  we  undermine 
the  truth  of  the  incarnation,  we  undermine  Chris¬ 
tianity.  The  instinctive  and  the  logical  reason  of  all 
the  enemies  of  Christianity,  ancient  and  modern,  has 
recognized  this  as  the  issue.  The  Church  in  the 
exercise  of  her  dogmatic  function,  is  more  explicit  and 
more  intense  in  the  affirmation  and  defense  of  this 
central  truth,  because  of  her  consciousness  that  the 
other  truths  hang  upon  it.  We  have  seen  in  the  brief 
review  of  the  great  controversy,  ending  with  the  full 
development  of  the  Nicene  Creed,  the  sensitiveness  of 
the  conscience  of  the  Church  in  rejecting  any  interpre¬ 
tation  or  theory  which  excludes,  or  even  tampers 
with  the  divine  element  in  the  nature  of  Christ. 
Parallel  with  this  movement,  and  at  times  mingling 
with  it,  is  the  manifestation  of  the  same  tenacity  in 
holding  the  revelation  of  the  incarnation,  when 
assailed  from  the  opposite  direction,  in  the  attempt 
to  relegate  to  the  background,  or  to  exclude  the 


214  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


essential  humanity  in  the  nature  and  person  of  Christ. 
This  is  a  passage  of  equal  significance  in  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church. 

The  early  Church  was  at  first  hopeful  of  the  imme¬ 
diate  conversion  of  the  nations  ;  and  to  the  end  of  the 
second  century  the  air  was  full  of  exuberant  anticipa¬ 
tions  of  the  speedy  triumph  of  Christianity  over  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world.  But  underneath  this  surface 
optimism,  due  to  the  wonderful  spread  of  Christianity, 
there  was  a  steady  development  of  pessimism  arising 
from  a  growing  consciousness  of  the  essential  antag¬ 
onism  between  the  darkened  conscience  and  the 
sensual  degradation  of  paganism  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  moral  ideals  and  spiritual  hopes  of  the  Gospel  on 
the  other.  The  Christian  as  an  individual,  felt  him¬ 
self  alone  and  powerless  to  cope  with  the  social  evils 
and  the  spiritual  darkness  around  him.  Misinter¬ 
preted  words  of  Christ  and  illusions  among  Chris¬ 
tians  of  the  first  generations,  had  laid  foundations  for 
dreams  of  a  millennial  advent,  as  a  miraculous  dispen¬ 
sation  for  the  conversion  of  mankind.  But  gener¬ 
ation  after  generation  passed  away  and  no  millennium 
came.  This  dream  of  a  personal  reign  of  a  visible 
king  to  convert  the  world  by  force  was  then,  as  it  has 
been  at  each  period  of  its  recurrence,  the  shadow  of  a 
latent  skepticism  as  to  the  reality  of  the  Saviour’s  last 
promise,  “  Lo,  I  am  with  you  to  the  end  of  the 
world ;  ”  with  you  in  My  human  sympathy  and  My 


AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  215 

Divine  power.  It  was  a  material  corruption  of  a 
spiritual  reality. 

Another  influence  was  the  pagan  philosophy,  the 
only  philosophy  they  knew.  The  stoical  principle  of 
the  essential  impurity  of  matter ;  the  doctrine  of 
Socrates  that  the  body  was  necessarily  evil  and  that 
the  passions  connected  with  it  were  the  enemies  of 
the  soul,  and  that  death  alone  was  emancipation  for 
the  good,  would  commend  itself  to  the  Christian 
mind  because  his  was  an  ideal  of  moral  purity  and 
spiritual  destiny  infinitely  beyond  the  highest  pagan 
conception.  Out  of  this  experience  of  the  hardness  of 
human  nature  and  the  philosophical  doctrine  of  the 
essential  evil  of  the  flesh,  asceticism  arose.  The 
orders,  the  brotherhoods  and  other  ascetic  associations 
had  for  their  object,  not  the  propagation  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  in  the  world,  but  its  preservation  and  the 
realization  of  it  among  themselves  by  the  exclusion  of 
the  world. 

Asceticism,  as  has  been  said,  was  the  expression  of 
a  “  noble  despair.”  The  Christian  feared  for  himself 
the  contact  with  the  human  relations  and  the  pagan 
atmosphere  of  the  world.  His  passions  were  strong 
and  hard  to  tame.  His  joy  in  wife  and  child  might 
obscure  the  glory  of  God  and  the  fair  vision  of  im¬ 
mortality  in  Christ.  The  business  of  the  world  might 
soil  the  whiteness  of  his  baptismal  garments.  He 
severed  his  human  ties  because,  to  him,  the  natural 


216  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

life  was  essentially  impure.  He  despaired  of  the 
present  life,  and  regarded  his  religion  as  designed  to 
be  realized  only  in  the  future  world.  Thus  his  Chris¬ 
tianity  became  an  other- world  religion.  He  conceived 
of  the  Christian  salvation  as  from,  and  not  through, 
the  natural  relations  of  human  life.  He  desired 
to  serve  God,  but  his  religion  had  lost  its  bal¬ 
ance.  He  saw  only  one  side  of  it,  and  that  the  dark 
side,  his  own  weakness  and  the  evil  in  the  world.  He 
could  not  see  the  Saviour,  with  human  sympathy  and 
Divine  strength,  bending  over  him,  with  the  promise, 
“  My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee  for  my  strength  is 
made  perfect  in  weakness.”1  To  live  the  higher  life 
and  save  his  soul,  he  must  leave  the  world  behind 
him. 

The  necessary  consequence  of  this  conception  was 
the  separation  of  things  secular  from  things  sacred,  as 
elements  essentially  opposed  to  each  other.  It  dis¬ 
tinguished  the  sainthood  of  the  orders  and  the  celibate 
as  the  true  ideal  of  Christian  life.  The  commonalty 
of  the  Church  and  the  world  it  regarded  as  living  on 
a  lower  plane  of  Christian  morality,  and  looking  up 
with  reverential  awe  to  those  who  had  made  the  great 
sacrifice  of  their  human  ties  and  their  natural  life  for 
the  life  eternal. 

Human  nature  acts  first,  and  thinks  afterwards.  In 
the  ordinary  formation  of  character,  practice  is  the 


1  2  Cor.  12  :  9. 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  217 

foundation  of  theory.  We  choose  our  life  first,  and 
then  bring  our  philosophy  to  justify  the  choice  we 
have  made.  The  development  of  Gnostic  Christian¬ 
ity,  which  we  find  in  asceticism,  had  in  it  the  seeds  of 
Docetic  theology.  It  was  preparing  the  way  for  the 
denial  of  the  humanity  of  Christ.  If  its  theory  was 
true  that  the  flesh  is  essentially  evil,  the  very  idea  of 
a  union  between  the  Divine  and  the  human  presents 
itself  as  a  contradiction.  From  this  point  of  view  it 
is  a  short  step  to  conceive  of  the  humanity  of  Christ 
as  only  a  semblance  ;  a  body  veiling  a  Divine  person¬ 
ality,  which  occupied  it  as  a  vehicle  for  manifestation, 
but  at  the  same  time  foreign  to  its  nature  and  sep¬ 
arated  from  it  by  an  infinite  gulf.  The  Docetic  heresy 
was  thus  the  denial  of  the  human  nature  of  Christ. 
The  rise  and  spread  of  Mariolatry  and  saint- worship, 
coeval  with  the  Docetic  exclusion  of  human  nature 
from  the  person  of  Christ,  finds  its  explanation  in 
ordinary  Christian  experience.  These  perversions 
were  only  pathetic  and  instinctive  efforts  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  consciousness  to  supply  the  vacant  throne  of  the 
human  Saviour  ;  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  between  God 
and  man  which  the  heretical  philosophy  had  created. 
Mariolatry  and  the  worship  of  saints  had  no  ground 
in  the  historical  faith.  They  were  foreign  and  con¬ 
tradictory  to  the  New  Testament.  They  were  antag¬ 
onistic  to  reason,  in  that  they  clothed  human  beings 
with  attributes  of  omniscience  and  omnipresence, 


218  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

which  are  only  intelligible  when  conceived  of  as  be¬ 
longing  to  the  Divine  nature.  The  Christian  heart 
conceives  of  Christ,  not  only  as  the  door  and  the  way 
through  which  we  come  to  God,  but  as  our  repre¬ 
sentative  in  the  very  nature  of  God.  When  the 
human  Saviour  is  taken  away,  and  the  ascended  Lord 
is  relegated  to  abstract  Divinity,  the  instincts  of  hu¬ 
man  nature,  blindly  groping  to  find  Him  by  the  aid 
of  an  earthborn  imagination,  adopt  the  substitute  of 
Mariolatry  and  saint  worship,  to  fill  the  vacant 
mercy  seat  of  prayer. 

The  Christian  Church  condemned  the  Docetic 
theories  one  by  one,  and  cast  them  beyond  the  pale 
of  orthodoxy.  St.  Augustine,  the  defender  of  the 
historic  faith,  was  the  greatest  speculative  thinker 
and  the  most  powerful  writer  of  the  age.  In  the  re¬ 
vulsion  of  his  spiritual  experience,  and  in  the  peni¬ 
tence  of  memory  over  a  wasted  youth,  he  had  gone 
to  the  extreme  of  asceticism.  But  when  he  is  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  Docetic  denial  of  the  faith  that 
his  Lord  was  truly  human,  as  well  as  truly  Divine,  he 
renounces  the  fundamental  principle  of  asceticism. 
He  attacks  the  Manichgean  dualism  of  the  essential 
evil  of  matter  and  of  the  flesh.  His  Lord  was  born  of 
a  woman.  “  The  word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us  and  we  beheld  His  glory ;  the  glory  as  of 
the  only  begotten  of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and 
truth.”  His  intellectual  grasp  found  in  this  a  central 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  219 


revelation  and  an  assumption  of  the  Gospels  and  the 
Epistles,  without  which  they  would  not  have  been 
written.  The  Son  of  God,  because  we,  the  children, 
were  flesh  and  blood,  took  part  of  the  same,  in  order 
that  He  might  be  one  with  us.  Is  it  possible  to  con¬ 
ceive  that  He  could  have  united  Himself  to  a  nature 
which  is  essentially  evil  ?  He  was  without  sin,  and 
yet  He  lived  His  human  life,  as  we  do,  in  the  body. 
What  is  this,  but  the  Divine  proclamation  that  sin 
has  no  necessary  connection  with  matter,  and  does 
not  belong  to  the  constitution  of  our  bodies  ?  Evil 
cannot  be  the  law  of  the  body,  its  natural  inclination, 
its  normal  life.  St.  Paul  has  said,  “  The  flesh  lusteth 
against  the  spirit,  and  the  spirit  against  the  flesh ; 
and  these  are  contrary  the  one  to  the  other ;  ” 1  but 
the  antagonism,  illustrated  in  this  imagery,  demands 
for  its  intelligent  interpretation  the  carnal  mind 
which  is  at  enmity  with  God  and  not  the  body  with 
its  natural  appetites  and  desires.  The  flesh  is  the  ex¬ 
pression  for  the  perverted  will,  and  the  corrupt  im¬ 
agination,  identifying  themselves  with  the  gratifica¬ 
tions  of  the  body  and  using  its  members  to  satisfy  the 
wants  of  a  spiritual  being.  The  flesh  must  in  itself 
be  as  innocent  in  man  as  it  is  in  animals.  It  is  only 
associated  with  evil  when  the  perverted  mind  takes  it 
as  an  end,  and  substitutes  the  perishable  for  the  im¬ 
perishable,  the  carnal  for  the  spiritual. 


1  Gal.  5  :  17. 


220  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  Christianity  "with  its 
revelation  of  the  sacredness  of  common  life  in  the 
eyes  of  God,  perverted  into  a  dualism  which  disinte¬ 
grates  human  life  and  pours  contempt  upon  its  natural 
relations.  With  St.  Paul  the  family  was  the  home 
and  the  nursery  of  the  Church.  The  marriage  bond 
was  the  type  of  the  union  of  Christ  with  His  Church. 
The  family  union,  in  its  spiritual  relations,  is  God’s 
ordinance  to  redeem  man  from  his  natural  selfhood, 
to  open  his  mind  to  the  realization  of  his  blessedness 
and  the  glory  of  his  destiny  in  living  in  and  for  the 
life  of  others.  That  highest  of  all  human  relations  in¬ 
volves  the  intermediation  of  the  natural  which  at  once 
develops  into  the  spiritual,  and  the  eternal.  As  the 
seed  in  the  ground  takes  up  the  dull  earth  and  trans¬ 
mutes  it  into  the  bud  and  the  flower,  so  that  which 
begins  in  what  we  call  our  lower  nature,  passes  on 
into  the  higher,  and  is  progressively  transformed  into 
the  love  of  parents  for  their  children,  and  children  for 
parents  ;  into  unselfish  devotions  and  beautiful  self- 
abnegations,  which  constitute  the  spiritual  basis  of  our 
social  existence,  and  which  dignify  and  elevate  those 
temporal  relations  which  we  sustain  to  the  material 
world,  into  the  training-school  of  our  immortality. 

Christ  was  human,  and  He  took  our  nature  upon 
Him  in  order  that  He  might  enter  into  and  redeem 
all  human  relations. 

In  the  vision  of  St.  John  in  Revelation  we  read, 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  221 

“  On  His  head  were  many  crowns.” 1  The  type  is 
taken  from  the  old  world  conquerors  who  had  sub¬ 
dued  many  nations ;  and  for  each  nation  there  was  a 
crown,  so  the  vision  would  tell  us  that  Christ  is  to 
reign  over  all  and  every  province  of  human  life ;  the 
family,  the  Church,  the  state,  the  social  life  of  com¬ 
munities,  the  policies  and  the  laws  of  nations,  liter¬ 
ature,  art  and  civilization ;  whatever  is  of  human  in¬ 
terest  is  of  infinite  interest  to  Him,  for  He  is  our  elder 
brother,  the  second  Adam  of  the  race.  With  Him 
our  redemption  from  sin,  in  and  through  all  of  these 
relations  of  our  temporal  life,  is  identical  with  spiritual 
salvation  and  the  realization  of  eternal  life.2 

As  we  have  seen  in  a  previous  discussion,  the  au¬ 
thority  of  Christianity  was  involved  in  the  Arian 
controversy  over  the  Divinity  of  Christ.  When  we 
consider  the  philosophy  of  the  controversies  over  the 
humanity  of  our  Lord,  the  importance  of  the  issues  at 
stake  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  Council  of 
Constantinople,  held  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  fourth 
century,  affirmed  the  true  humanity  of  Christ  and  re¬ 
jected  the  Appollinarian  view  which  contained  in  it  the 
principle  of  the  various  phases  of  the  Docetic  theories 
which  had  been  working  in  the  mind  of  parts  of  the 
Christian  world  since  the  last  part  of  the  second 
century. 

Even  Harnack,  whose  views  of  the  history  of  Chris- 


1  Rev.  19  :  12. 


3  See  note  9. 


222  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

tian  dogma  have  been  confused,  and  often  rendered 
contradictory,  by  the  attempt  to  apply  the  doctrine  of 
scientific  evolution  to  Christianity,  admits  that  the 
Council  of  Constantinople,  in  preserving  the  perfect 
humanity  of  Christ,  did  an  inestimable  service  to  the 
world  and  to  all  later  generations. 

It  would  seem  that  the  time  has  come,  when  among 
educated  Christian  people,  sneers  at  Christian  dogma, 
and  the  dogmatic  function  of  the  Church  of  the 
earlier  ages,  should  be  assigned  to  ignorance,  arising 
from  neglect  of  opportunities  or  from  incompetent 
teachers.  All  organizations  have  authority,  as  such, 
to  prescribe  the  terms  of  membership,  the  duties  of 
officers,  rules  of  government,  and  also  the  purposes 
and  the  principles  which  constitute  the  reasons  for 
their  existence.  This  is  the  lowest  view  possible 
which  can  be  taken  of  the  authority  of  any  associa¬ 
tion.  It  is  principle  that  constitutes  the  bond  of 
coherence  and  the  guarantee  of  cooperation.  With¬ 
out  political  ideas  a  party  name  represents  a  rope  of 
sand  disintegrating  into  the  individual  units  which 
compose  it. 

In  some  quarters  of  the  Christian  Church  there  are 
those  who  seem  to  hold  that  a  religious  teacher  or  a 
preacher  of  the  gospel  is  commissioned  to  evolve  his 
message  out  of  his  own  subjective  experiences  and 
ideas ;  and  that  each  individual  clergyman  has 
authority  to  ordain  rites  and  ceremonies  for  himself 


AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  223 


and  his  own  congregation.  This  reminds  us  of  the 
extreme  Protestant  recoil  from  the  abuses  of  author¬ 
ity  in  the  claims  of  the  Koman  Church,  by  throwing 
off  all  connection  with  the  past,  and  proceeding  upon 
the  assumption  that  our  Lord,  when  He  ascended  to 
heaven,  left  Christianity  in  the  world  for  each  man  to 
do  with  it  as  best  he  could,  with  or  without  an  or¬ 
ganization  as  seemed  right  in  his  own  eyes. 

The  Church  in  her  creeds  gives  the  summary  of  the 
facts  of  Christianity  and  the  faith  of  the  gospel,  as 
testified  in  the  historic  record,  in  her  own  experience, 
and  in  the  Word  of  God.  She  makes  no  claim  of  in¬ 
fallibility  for  the  form  of  words  in  which  her  creeds 
are  expressed,  just  as  she  has  never,  even  in  times 
when  the  idea  of  the  verbal  infallibility  of  Scripture 
was  the  prevailing  doctrine,  committed  herself  to  that 
theory.  Hot  holding  the  infallibility  of  the  form  of 
her  creeds,  she  could  not  hold  that  they  were  un¬ 
changeable.  The  old  creeds  were  formed  out  of  the 
exigencies  of  the  case  as  they  arose,  to  end  a  con¬ 
troversy,  to  ward  off  heresy  and  schism,  to  preserve 
truth  and  to  secure  peace.  Her  representatives, 
gathered  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  did  not  come  to 
the  great  councils  as  professional  theologians  to  solve, 
as  has  been  said,  metaphysical  problems.  They  were 
men  of  action.  Their  obedience  to  the  summons  of 
duty  involved  toil  and  danger  and  sacrifice,  unknown 
and  impossible  to  realize,  in  the  luxuries  and  amenities 


224  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


of  modern  travel  upon  similar  missions.  They  came 
at  the  call  of  the  Church  to  the  field  of  battle,  not  as 
speculative  scholars,  but  as  soldiers  to  save  the  Church 
and  to  defend  the  truth  of  Christianity.  They  did 
not  come  to  add  to  revelation.  They  knew  that 
could  be  done  only  by  a  new  revelation.  They 
came  to  defend  the  faith  once  given  to  the  saints, 
and  to  exclude  additions  as  they  arose  successively 
in  the  form  of  heresies.  They  had  no  authority  to 
add ;  they  were  there  to  exclude  the  false  and  to  de¬ 
fend  the  true. 

In  all  of  these  controversies  it  would  be  confusion 
of  thought  and  untrue  to  fact  to  criticise  the  action 
of  the  Church  in  the  formation  of  these  creeds  and 
dealing  with  these  great  heresies,  as  an  undertaking 
to  explain  mysteries,  and  entering  into  questions  in¬ 
volving  infinite  quantities  beyond  the  grasp  of  the 
human  mind.  This  is  precisely  what  the  Church  did 
not  do.  The  heresies  were  all  attempts  at  explana¬ 
tions  of  mysteries ;  their  avowed  object  and  purpose 
being  to  relieve  the  faith  of  the  burden  and  the 
disability  of  mystery.  They  sought  to  bring  the 
great  facts  and  doctrines  of  Christianity  within  the 
entire  range  of  the  human  understanding.  What  the 
Church  did  was  to  weigh  those  explanations  and  re¬ 
ject  them,  if  contradictory  and  perilous  to  the  faith 
and  the  truth  in  behalf  of  which,  ostensibly,  they 
were  proposed  as  a  defense  and  an  explanation. 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  225 


Arius  projected,  in  his  imagination,  a  conception 
of  Christ  as  a  being  created  by  God  before  the  world 
was  made  after  the  pattern  of  the  Logos  who  was 
with  God,  and  who  was  God.  This  pattern  was  not 
God  ;  but  was  separated  from  Him  by  the  distance  be¬ 
tween  the  creature  and  the  creator,  between  the  finite 
and  the  infinite.  This  image  of  the  Logos,  Arius  con¬ 
ceived  as  united  in  Christ  to  a  human  body,  taking 
the  place  in  that  body  of  a  human  soul. 

This  conception,  offered  as  a  substitute  for  the 
incarnation,  cleared  up  the  mystery,  but  it  destroyed 
Christianity.  In  the  Hew  Testament,  upon  this  sub¬ 
ject,  there  is  only  one  idea,  one  revelation,  that  is,  the 
union  in  Christ  of  God  with  man.  Nothing  is  said 
there  of  the  creature  proposed  by  Arius  as  a  substi¬ 
tute  for  Christ.  St.  John  had  said  of  the  Logos,  “  by 
Him  all  things  were  created.”  The  whole  of  the  Hew 
Testament  said  of  Christ  that  He  is  the  one  Mediator 
between  God  and  man.  How  could  these  beliefs  be 
entertained  for  a  moment,  if  Christ  was  only  a 
creature,  a  being  between  God  and  man,  without 
divinity  and  without  humanity  ?  If,  being  a  creature 
Himself,  He  created  all  things ;  if,  being  neither  God 
nor  man  in  His  nature,  He  was  the  Mediator  between 
God  and  man,  such  a  theory,  beside  being  directly 
contradictory  to  scripture,  raised  far  more  perplexing 
mysteries  than  the  orignial  mystery,  for  which  it  was 
offered  as  an  explanation.  Mr.  Balfour  remarks,  with 


226  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

reference  to  this  and  all  such  explanations  as  con¬ 
stitute  the  substance  of  the  various  heresies  con¬ 
demned  by  the  Church  in  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries,  that  the  Church  held  that  “  all  such  expla¬ 
nations  inflicted  irremediable  impoverishment  upon 
the  idea  of  the  Godhead,  which  was  essentially 
involved  in  the  Christian  revelation.  They  insisted 
on  preserving  that  idea  in  all  of  its  inexplicable  ful¬ 
ness;  and  so  it  has  come  about,  that  while  such 
simplifications  as  those  of  the  Arian,  for  example,  are 
so  alien  and  impossible  to  modern  modes  of  thought 
that  if  they  had  been  incorporated  with  Christianity 
they  must  have  destroyed  it,  the  doctrine  of  Christ’s 
divinity  still  gives  reality  and  life  to  the  worship  of 
millions  of  pious  souls,  who  are  wholly  ignorant  of  the 
controversy  to  which  they  owe  its  preservation,  and 
of  the  technicalities  which  its  discussion  has  in¬ 
volved.” 

The  saying  of  a  celebrated  adversary  of  Christianity, 
which  has  been  referred  to,  has  been  illustrated  in  the 
results  of  the  great  ecclesiastical  controversies  of  the 
first  four  centuries.  Christ  is  the  authority  in  His 
own  religion.  “If  we  undermine  the  incarnation  we 
undermine  Christianit}7.” 

We  are  brought  again  to  the  question  of  the 
relation  between  authority  and  reason.  What  part 
had  reason  in  defending  the  truth,  in  these  centuries 
of  peril  ?  Was  it  employed  by  Him,  the  great  Head 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  227 

of  the  Church,  in  the  preservation  of  the  authority  of 
Christianity  in  the  world  ? 

Can  any  one  be  in  doubt  as  to  the  answer,  who 
looks  into  the  operation  of  his  own  mind  when  he  is 
trying  to  reach  a  decision  and  to  find  his  way  to  the 
truth,  where  plausible  arguments  are  presented  on 
either  side  of  a  question  ?  In  the  great  councils  that 
formed  these  creeds  that  have  been  practically  ac¬ 
cepted  by  the  Christian  world  for  centuries,  doubtless 
the  Holy  Spirit  was  given  in  answer  to  prayer  ;  but  is 
there  a  necessity  for  the  assumption  of  any  other 
operation  of  the  Spirit  upon  the  minds  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  those  early  councils  than  that  for  which  we 
pray  in  our  prayer  book,  when  we  meet  in  the  inter¬ 
ests  of  Christ  and  His  Church,  that  we  may  be  saved 
from  ignorance,  pride  and  prejudice ;  that  is,  that  the 
moral  atmosphere  of  our  minds  may  be  cleared ;  that 
party  prejudice  may  be  allayed ;  that  our  conceits,  the 
pride  of  our  own  opinions,  may  be  subordinated  to  the 
love  of  the  truth,  so  that  the  reason,  the  common 
sense  of  our  minds  may  have  fair  play,  to  see  and  to 
weigh  and  to  come  to  a  right  judgment  in  all  things. 
The  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  to  remove  obstruc¬ 
tions,  and  to  clarify  the  media  through  which  reason 
sees ;  it  is  to  keep  steady  the  balances  in  which  reason 
weighs  evidence,  and  compares  relations.  The  ques¬ 
tion  with  those  early  councils  was  the  same,  in  kind, 
with  all  other  deliberative  bodies  in  civilized  govern- 


228  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

ment.  On  the  one  side  is  the  common  sense  of  the 
Christian  Church,  the  belief  in  the  Gospel,  the  history 
and  the  word  of  revelation ;  on  the  other  is  a  new 
doctrine  seeking  entrance  into  the  body  of  Christian 
beliefs.  What  the  council  did  was  to  compare  the 
new  with  the  old ;  to  ascertain  whether  the  new  was 
inconsistent  with  the  old.  It  did  not  discard  the  new 
simply  upon  the  ground  of  its  newness ;  it  considered 
the  question  as  to  whether  the  new  proposition  was 
tenable  and,  if  tenable  alongside  of  the  old,  it  was  re¬ 
ceived  as  an  expansion  and  an  illustration  of  truth. 
But  the  propositions  condemned  as  heresy,  as  in  the 
Arian,  the  Sabellian,  the  Appollinarian,  the  hTestorian 
and  Euty chian  controversies,  were  all  adjudicated  by 
comparing  them  with  the  great  Christian  beliefs,  with 
revelation.  They  were  found  to  be  inconsistent,  and 
destructive  of  the  historic  faith,  and  contradictory  to 
revelation ;  and  therefore  they  were  pronounced  to  be 
heresies,  and  the  great  body  of  the  Christian  world 
has  accepted  their  judgment  and  acknowledged  the 
debt  it  owes  to  them. 

Whatever  of  authority  those  decisions  have  exer¬ 
cised  for  the  preservation  of  Christianity  is  the 
product  of  reason,  and  reasonable  processes.  The 
undue  exaltation  of  the  authority  of  a  general  council, 
has  led,  by  a  law  of  all  extremes,  to  its  undue  depreci¬ 
ation,  to  the  great  injury  of  the  unity  of  the  Christian 
Church.  An  assembly  of  bishops  from  all  parts  of  the 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  229 


Christian  world,  supposed  to  be  in  regular  succession 
from  the  Apostles  and  heirs  of  Apostolic  tradi¬ 
tions,  has  doubtless  appealed  to  the  Christian  im¬ 
agination  in  forming  a  vague  conception,  but  never¬ 
theless  a  definite  claim,  for  the  infallibility  of  their 
decrees. 

If  they  invoked  and  received  the  illumination  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  it  has  been  said  to  follow  that  their 
definition  of  the  truth  must  be  received  as  the  mind 
of  the  Spirit,  and  submitted  to  without  question  as 
absolute  authority.  But  the  premises  are  far  too 
wide  for  the  conclusion.  Infallibility  that  dispenses 
with  reason,  in  the  requirement  of  passive  submission, 
is  not,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  in  any  department  of 
God’s  education  of  the  world,  a  part  of  His  plan  and 
purpose.  To  leave  out  reason,  in  dealing  with  the 
human  race,  would  be  to  blindfold  and  paralyze 
activity  in  the  human  mind.  “  Come,  let  us  reason 
together,”  is  God’s  message,  through  the  prophet 
Isaiah,  to  the  backsliding  children  of  Israel. 

It  was  reason  comparing  one  thing  with  another, 
judging  and  weighing  and  sifting,  doubtless  under  the 
protection  of  Providence  and  quickened  by  the  spirit, 
but  still  responsible  reason,  that  reached  the  conclu¬ 
sions  in  the  great  decisions  of  the  Christian  councils. 
Therefore  they  have  found,  and  will  continue  to  find, 
a  response  in  the  reason  of  the  Christian  world ;  and 
the  response  of  a  reasonable  faith  is  the  guarantee  of 


230  AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

an  authority,  submission  to  which  is  the  service  of 
perfect  freedom. 

The  ages  for  a  general  council  of  the  Christian 
world  have  probably  passed  away,  never  to  come  back 
again.  The  breaking  up  of  the  organic,  or  more  ac¬ 
curately,  the  external  unity  of  the  Church  has  re¬ 
moved  the  occasion,  or  at  least  relegated  its  possibility 
to  a  generation  in  the  far  future.  Many  Christian 
minds,  with  St.  Paul’s  spiritual  idealization  of  the 
Church  universal  before  them,  “  There  is  one  Lord, 
one  faith,  one  baptism,  one  God  and  father  of  all,” 1 
find  it  impossible  to  interpret  the  language  as  setting 
forth  any  other  principle  than  that  of  the  corporate 
and  organic  unity  of  Christ’s  followers,  as  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  existence  of  the  Christian  Church.  Con¬ 
trasting  that  conception  with  the  divisions  in  the 
Christian  world,  they  are  driven  to  the  pessimistic 
conclusion,  that  the  spirit  of  unity  and  unifying 
authority  has  disappeared  from  the  Christianity  of 
our  modern  world.  They  interpret  Christ’s  dying 
prayer,  that  His  followers  might  be  one,  that  the 
world  might  believe  in  Him,  to  mean  that  organic 
unity  is  the  necessity  for  the  conversion  of  the  world ; 
and  they  are  confronted  with  the  mystery  that  the 
answer  to  that  prayer,  as  they  have  interpreted  it, 
seems  to  be  more  remote  in  this  generation  than  in 
any  of  the  past  ages  of  the  Christian  Church. 


1  Ephesians  4:5, 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  231 


It  might  tend  to  impart  comfort  to  such  minds  to 
find,  in  other  realms  of  the  higher  life  of  mankind, 
the  same  diversity  of  theory,  the  same  disappoint¬ 
ment  in  the  efforts  at  unification.  In  the  fields  of 
philosophy  there  never  was  an  age,  characterized  by 
such  efforts  of  large  and  cultivated  intellects  to  reach 
agreement  upon  great  unifying  principles  of  thought 
and  belief,  as  our  own.  In  the  realm  of  speculative 
theology  we  find  a  repetition  of  variation ;  while  in 
the  application  to  Church  government  and  forms  of 
worship  the  situation  is,  if  anything,  more  diversified. 
While  it  is  our  duty  to  strive  after  and  pray  for,  as  we 
do,  the  spirit  of  unity  among  all  Christians  and  in  the 
heart  of  every  Christian,  it  is  none  the  less  the  duty 
of  Christian  humility  to  remember  that  divine  love 
and  wisdom  know  what  is  best  for  the  education  of 
the  human  race ;  and  that  while  we  may  reach  con¬ 
clusions  which  seem  to  be  logically  irrefutable  from 
premises  drawn  from  the  limited  field  of  our  own  ob¬ 
servation,  yet  when  we  consider  mankind  with  their 
almost  endless  variety,  and  God  with  His  infinite  re¬ 
sources,  we  might  entertain  at  least  the  suggestion 
that  variety  of  method  may  be  an  intended  accommo¬ 
dation  to  meet  the  varieties  of  human  nature. 

To  those,  to  whom  the  divisions  in  form  and  worship 
and  theology  among  Christians  in  our  modern  world, 
constitute  a  trial  and  a  subject  of  profound  solicitude, 
a  consideration  is  commended  which  we  habitually 


232  AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

neglect.  The  tendency  to  exaggerate  points  of  differ- 
ence,  to  the  neglect  of  deep  and  fundamental  grounds 
of  agreement,  seems  to  find  its  root  in  a  natural  in¬ 
firmity,  disposing  men  to  judge  by  the  appearance 
only.  The  points  in  which  the  various  Christian 
churches  agree  are  taken  for  granted,  and  a  thing 
which  is  taken  for  granted  drops  out  of  consideration. 
The  points  where  they  differ,  either  in  organism  or 
forms  of  worship,  attract  and  absorb  observation. 
The  names  of  churches  are  adopted,  not  to  represent 
the  doctrines  and  the  principles  in  which  they  agree 
with  other  churches,  but  the  one  point,  and  it  may  be 
the  only  one,  in  which  they  differ.  The  difference  is 
held  up  to  view ;  the  agreement  is  suppressed  and 
passes  out  of  sight.  It  is  a  tendency  deep  down  in 
human  nature.  It  is  one  side  of  our  temptation  to 
walk  by  sight,  and  not  by  faith.  The  things  in  wThich 
we  agree  are  spiritual,  the  things  in  which  we  differ 
are  the  external,  the  formal,  the  material.  The  gulf 
between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  between  capital  and 
labor,  is  the  difference  of  the  conscious  possession  of 
wealth  and  power  from  the  lot  of  toil  and  poverty 
and  hopeless  aspirations. 

A  philosopher  says,  “  It  is  a  general  law  that  what 
counts  at  first  sight  is  difference.  When  we  measure 
our  income  and  our  resources,  it  is  not  wholly  what 
we  are  and  have  that  gives  the  habitual  tone  to  our 
mind.  What  we  see  as  ourselves  in  our  mental  vision, 


AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  233 

what  we  think  others  will  estimate  us  at,  is  the  differ¬ 
ential  amount  between  our  estate,  our  endowments, 
and  theirs.  The  nearer  the  fundamental  equation  of 
what  we  are  and  have,  with  what  others  are  and  have, 
the  more  keenly  do  we  set  store  by  our  petty  preroga¬ 
tive,  in  that  imagination  of  compared  dignity  which 
haunts  like  a  demon.  It  is  not  always  his  poverty  that 
makes  the  poor  man’s  hardship;  it  is  as  often  the 
sense  that  he  is  poorer  than  others ;  it  is  as  often  the 
sense  poorer,  above  all,  than  others  he  would  other¬ 
wise  have  matched.” 1 

It  is  the  consciousness  of  these  differences  that 
widens  the  gulf  between  the  classes ;  and  nothing  but 
the  Christian  Gospel,  that  appeals  to  them  upon  the 
basis  of  their  unity  in  Christ,  can  transcend  their 
alienations.  They  must  see  the  broad,  deep,  eternal 
unities  over  their  differences.  To  the  rich  man,  the 
conception  is  the  fanaticism  of  the  demagogue ;  to  the 
poor  man  it  is  the  scorn  of  satire.  In  Christ  it  is 
reality,  it  is  the  common  sense,  as  well  as  the  deepest 
essence  of  the  saving  power  of  the  Gospel.  The  rich 
man  and  the  poor  man,  the  capitalist  and  the  laborer 
are  one  in  sin,  in  sorrow,  in  death  and  in  judgment ; 
one  in  Christ,  in  redemption,  in  salvation  and  in 
eternal  life. 

The  envy  of  the  poor  towards  the  rich,  the  hard¬ 
ness,  the  indifference  and  the  injustice  of  the  rich 

1  Professor  Wallace,  Gifford  Lectures,  p.  94. 


234  AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

towards  the  poor,  cannot  be  converted  by  law  as  a 
constraining  force  outside  of  the  heart  and  the  con¬ 
science  of  the  people.  We  may  investigate  the 
history  of  civilization  and  the  philosophy  of  the 
adjustment  of  human  rights,  the  duties  of  authority 
and  the  limits  of  governmental  control  in  relation  to 
individual  liberty.  We  may  study  the  schemes  of 
social  regeneration,  which  have  kindled  the  imagi¬ 
nations  of  thinkers  like  Comte  or  Fourier  or  wilder 
ones,  as  the  Socialists  in  Germany  of  the  present  gen¬ 
eration  ;  the  classes  may  organize  and  put  themselves 
in  battle  array  and  awaken  the  consciences  of  the 
great  masses  of  Europe  and  America  to  the  peril  of 
our  civilization,  and  these  may  bring  temporary 
adjustments,  but  they  will  be  only  temporary.  Noth¬ 
ing  can  heal  the  alienations  but  the  common  brother¬ 
hood  in  Christ.  That  did  it  once  when  Jew  and 
Gentile,  Greek  and  Barbarian  forgot  their  hatreds  of 
centuries  and  loved  one  another,  to  the  wonder  of  the 
pagan  world.  That  can  accomplish  the  reconciliation, 
but  nothing  else  can.  It  is  not  the  organization,  but 
the  spirit  of  Christ  in  the  organization  as  the  soul  and 
the  seat  of  its  authority,  which  constitutes  the  unify¬ 
ing  principle.  Christ,  as  God  incarnate,  is  not  only 
the  author  of  eternal  life,  but  He  is  the  King  of  men, 
He  is  the  Saviour  of  society. 

The  sectarian  spirit,  in  every  department  of  life,  is 
born  of  the  pride  that  persistently  disowns  the  agree- 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  235 


ments  of  brotherhood  and  bounds  its  sympathies 
within  the  limitations  of  differences.  It  is  the  spirit 
of  a  set,  a  clique,  a  select  few  found  in  communities 
small  and  large.  It  is  the  bane  of  society,  of  scholar¬ 
ship,  of  literature.  It  is  that  which  gives  rise  to 
hundreds  of  groups  of  people  embracing  some  fancy, 
mystical  or  formal,  and  attaching  it  to  a  religious 
creed  to  mark  them  off  from  the  rest  of  the  religious 
world. 

Renan  says  something  like  this,  “  It  is  so  gratifying 
to  think  that  one  belongs  to  a  little  aristocracy  of  the 
truth  ;  that  we  are  a  peculiar  people  ;  that  we  hold  the 
deposit  of  that  which  is  best.” 

No  ridicule  can  penetrate  that  ignorance  of  pride. 
The  only  cure  is  the  converting  grace  of  the  spirit  of 
brotherhood  in  Christ. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  ages  have  passed  for 
general  councils  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  But  surely 
we  may  be  thankful  for  that  organic  unity  which 
bound  the  Church  together  long  enough  to  secure  the 
canon  of  Scripture,  as  the  record  and  the  word  of 
Revelation,  and  the  testimony  of  its  consciousness  and 
its  reason  to  the  central  truth  of  the  Gospel,  as 
expressed  in  the  great  creeds  of  Christendom.  These 
creeds  may  in  the  future  form  a  basis  for  practical 
cooperation  and  brotherly  sympathy  between  all  the 
variations  of  external  form,  which  may  bring  about 
such  organic  unity  as  may  be  intended  by  Christ,  the 


236  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

Head  of  that  Church  which  embraces  all  who  own 
Him  as  their  human  Saviour  and  their  divine  Lord. 

If  we  of  this  generation  could  hope  for  a  represent¬ 
ative  gathering  of  all  the  great  churches,  those  who 
are  doing  the  work  of  Christ  at  home,  who  are  taking 
the  Bible  in  every  tongue  to  all  the  families  of  man¬ 
kind,  who  are  fulfilling  His  command,  and  with 
wonderful  signs  of  His  blessing  upon  the  preaching  of 
His  Gospel  to  every  creature,  can  we  doubt  that  such 
an  assembly,  with  spontaneous  fervor,  would  declare 
the  Bible  as  their  rule  of  faith  and  practice,  the  Sacra¬ 
ments  as  Divinely  appointed  means  of  grace  and,  with 
one  voice  in  many  tongues,  join  in  the  great  con¬ 
fessions  of  the  Apostles’  and  the  Hicene  Creeds. 

Such  a  scene  might  interpret  the  prophetic  meaning 
of  St.  Paul’s  memorable  passage,  “  There  are  diversities 
of  gifts,  but  the  same  Spirit.  And  there  are  differ¬ 
ences  of  administrations,  but  the  same  Lord.  And 
there  are  diversities  of  operations,  but  it  is  the  same 
God  which  worketh  all  in  all.”  1 

In  the  meantime  let  us  realize  in  our  own  blessed 
communion,  with  its  great  heritage  from  the  past, 
opportunities  and  responsibilities  for  maintaining,  in 
its  purity,  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints. 

That  great  Church,  of  which  we  are  a  branch, 
occupies  in  the  Providence  of  God,  a  position  in  the 
thought  and  the  civilization  of  the  world  which  is  ex- 


1 1  Cor.  12:  4. 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  237 

ceptional  in  its  opportunities  for  the  defense  and  the 
propagation  of  the  Gospel.  She  has  in  her  worship 
for  minister  and  people,  the  great  creeds  in  which 
every  heart  and  tongue  confesses  the  essentials  of  the 
Christian  faith. 

In  the  position  which  she  assigns  to  those  creeds  in 
the  education  and  the  worship  of  her  people,  she  re¬ 
gards  herself  and  all  of  her  branches,  as  trustees  of 
statements  of  facts  and  gospel  truths  which  are  to  be 
preserved  unchanged  through  all  revolutions  of 
thought  and  form,  and  which  are  to  be  transmitted  to 
the  future  as  treasures  which  she  has  inherited  from 
the  past.  These  expressions  of  the  essence  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  she  holds  as  a  sacred  trust  to  be  handed  on 
from  generation  to  generation. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  great  work  of  that  early 
church  in  the  prolonged  struggles  which  resulted  in 
the  creeds,  was  not  the  formulation  of  systematic 
theologies,  or  speculative  opinions.  She  gathered  the 
facts  and  the  truths  of  Christianity  together  and  ex¬ 
pressed  them  in  their  unexplained  fulness.  A  Church 
is  not  a  body  of  speculative  theologians.  It  has  a 
higher  and  greater  work  to  do  than  thinking  and 
systematizing  and  rounding  points  for  agreements  in 
the  realm  of  speculation.  It  has  to  take  the  gospel 
to  the  world  and  teach  all  men.  It  has  to  help  and 
to  heal  and  to  comfort  and  to  feed  the  flock.  It  has, 
above  all  things,  to  unite  them  in  faith  by  expressions 


238  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


and  beliefs  in  which  they  can  all  agree,  in  forms 
through  which  they  can  all  worship,  men,  women  and 
children.  A  Church  is  greater  than  theologies  or  the 
body  of  theologians.  If  it  is  to  accomplish  its  work 
in  the  world,  it  needs  unity  of  spirit  in  the  bonds  of 
peace.  Its  vital  confessions  must  be  great  beliefs  in 
the  simplest  forms. 

When  we  have  entered  the  Christian  ministry  with 
its  opportunities,  far  beyond  those  of  any  other  call¬ 
ing,  for  knowing  human  nature,  it  will  not  be  long 
before  the  absurdity  of  the  conception,  that  our  office 
is  to  train  our  congregations  to  be  bodies  of  theologi¬ 
ans,  will  dawn  upon  us. 

The  great  truths  unite ;  human  speculations  divide. 

Of  these  great  truths  the  Church  holds  the  Incarna¬ 
tion  of  the  Son  of  God,  a  human  and  Divine  Saviour, 
as  the  greatest ;  the  “  articulus  stantis  aut  cadentis 
ecclesise.”  This  is  the  significance  of  the  position  she 
gives  to  her  creeds. 

We  are  asked  from  various  quarters,  especially 
Eome  on  the  one  side,  and  extreme  Protestant  Ger¬ 
many  on  the  other,  and  not  a  few  books  in  our  own 
country  that  echo  the  thoughts  of  the  old  world,  as  to 
the  relation  of  the  permanency  of  the  creeds  to  the 
development  and  the  evolution  of  doctrine  and 
theology. 

Is  theology  a  science  ?  If  so,  it  must  obey  the  law 
of  development.  It  must  come  under  the  sweep  of 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  239 


evolution,  the  great  order  of  all  the  sciences.  The 
answer  would  be,  what  do  you  mean  by  science  ?  If 
you  conceive  of  theology  as  a  system  in  which  the 
parts  and  the  truths  are  logically  and  methodically 
arranged  in  their  relations  to  each  other,  then  the¬ 
ology  is  a  science.  Its  advance  would  then  consist  in 
the  progressive  harmonizing  of  all  revealed  truths ;  in 
the  elimination  of  supposed  contradictions ;  in  the 
clearing  away  of  shadows  of  misapprehensions;  the 
confusions  of  logomachies  and  the  comprehension  of 
antagonisms  into  higher  and  higher  unities.  In  this 
sense  theology  is  a  science,  and  one  of  the  noblest  of 
them  all.  But  if  you  use  the  word  science  in  its 
proper  sense  as  identical,  in  its  principles,  its  methods 
and  the  material  upon  which  it  works,  with  physical 
science,  the  answer  would  be  the  explanation  of  the 
utter  misapprehension  upon  which  the  question  is  pro¬ 
pounded. 

Science  in  Physics  is  the  observation  of  facts  and 

%/ 

tracing  the  causes  of  phenomena.  The  things  that  we 
see  are  the  consequents ;  the  search  of  science  is  for 
the  antecedents.  Its  progress  is  the  discovery  of  facts 
in  their  causal  relations.  Thus,  the  facts  of  nature, 
that  appear  arbitrary  and  disconnected,  are  linked  to¬ 
gether  by  science  in  a  chain  of  cause  and  effect.  Each 
consequent  in  the  evolution  of  nature  becomes  a  phys¬ 
ical  cause.  The  seed  is  the  cause  of  the  plant ;  the 
plant  is  the  cause  of  the  bud  and  the  bud  of  the 


240  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


flower.  Evolution  means  that  the  plant,  the  hud,  the 
flower  and  the  fruit  were  all  coiled  up  in  the  seed,  and 
the  elastic  forces  of  life,  under  the  conditions  of  en¬ 
vironment,  are  unfolding  the  coil  and  giving  rise  to 
new  forms  that  absorb  the  old  ones  which  contained 
in  them  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  the  new. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  evolution  in  science.  The 
notion  that  a  similar  process  is  applicable  to  Revela¬ 
tion  involves  a  contradiction.  Revelation  may  be, 
and  is  progressive,  as  men  are  able  to  bear  it  and  to 
appropriate  it,  as  God  gives  it,  but  at  each  stage  it  is 
revelation  of  truth,  and  truth  is  always  the  same. 
Revelation  from  God  is  true  for  all  men  and  for  all 
ages.  The  revelation  of  the  Gospel  to  the  Apostles 
and  the  first  Christians,  in  its  adaptation  to  human 
needs,  is  identical  to  believers  to-day  after  twenty 
centuries.  Its  power  for  conversion  and  for  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  spiritual  life  was  as  great  at  the  begin¬ 
ning  as  it  will  be  at  the  end. 

We  go  back  to  the  New  Testament,  as  the  fountain 
for  inspiration,  and  for  examples  of  the  power  of 
Christianity  to  realize  in  sinful  human  nature  the 
noblest  types  of  sacrifice,  of  love,  of  duty,  of  spiritual 
elevation,  possible  to  man  in  any  age  of  the  life  of  the 
race. 

Inorganic  nature  is  devoid  of  the  potency  to  pro¬ 
duce  organic  life,  and  would  remain  so  for  eternity,  as 
science  tells  us,  unless  the  seed  of  life  comes  down  to 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  241 


it  from  a  system  above,  so  revelation  is  life  from 
above.  As  Meander  says  in  the  introduction  to  his 
History  of  the  Christian  Church,  “  How  Christianity 
we  regard  not  as  a  power  that  has  sprung  up  out  of 
the  hidden  depths  of  man’s  nature,  but  as  one  which 
descended  from  above,  because  heaven  opened  itself 
for  the  rescue  of  revolted  humanity  ;  a  power  which, 
as  it  is  exalted  above  all  that  human  nature  can  create 
out  of  its  own  resources,  must  impart  to  that  nature  a 
new  life,  and  change  it  from  its  inmost  centre.  The 
great  source  of  this  power  is  the  person  whose  life  its 
appearance  exhibits  to  us, — Jesus  of  JSazareth, — the 
Redeemer  of  mankind,  when  alienated  from  God  by 
sin.  In  the  submission  of  faith  to  Him,  and  in  the 
appropriation  of  the  truth  which  He  revealed  consists 
the  essence  of  Christianity.” 

The  distinction  then  is  clear ;  and  revelation,  from 
its  very  nature,  cannot  be  brought  under  the  law  of 
physical  and  scientific  evolution.  The  defenders  of 
that  law,  who  contend  for  its  universal  application, 
are  thus  driven  to  deny  the  possibility  of  a  revelation, 
and  along  with  that,  to  deny  the  supernatural  from 
beginning  to  end  ;  the  supernatural  in  God  ;  the  su¬ 
pernatural  in  man  ;  the  supernatural  in  Christ ;  the 
supernatural  in  prayer  ;  the  supernatural  in  the  spirit 
of  God  visiting  and  communing  with  the  soul  of  man  ; 
the  supernatural  in  the  hope  of  immortal  life. 

This  principle  dominates  the  criticism  of  a  large 


242  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 


class  of  minds,  especially  in  Germany.  Professor 
Pfleiderer,  of  the  University  of  Berlin,  is  a  typical 
specimen  of  this  phase  of  modern  thinking  in  theol¬ 
ogy.  He  reduces  Christ,  in  the  attempt  to  bring  the 
historic  faith  under  the  law  of  physical  evolution,  to 
a  product  of  his  environment.  He  was  the  fruition 
of  the  best  in  the  Jewish  race ;  and  Christianity 
was  produced  out  of  the  consciousness  of  humanity 
in  the  stage  of  its  natural  evolution,  in  the  age  in 
which  it  appeared  in  the  world.  A  reader  of  the 
last  volume  of  his  works,  translated  into  English, 
will  find  in  these  essays  upon  the  “  Evolution  of 
Theology  ”  that  strange  combination,  frequently  ex¬ 
hibited  in  the  German  mind,  of  sincerity  and  can¬ 
dor,  combined  with  unconscious  lack  of  reverence  and 
the  tendency  to  gravitation  to  one  idea,  with  inge¬ 
nuity  as  distinguished  from  logical  and  practical 
reason.1 

In  the  sense  in  which  we  use  the  word  science  in 
connection  with  theology,  as  distinguished  from  its 
significance  when  applied  to  the  order  of  nature,  there 
is  room  for  indefinite  progress.  One  feature  in  the 
great  creeds,  which  have  been  handed  down  to  us 
from  the  elder  generations  of  the  Church,  is  that  sim¬ 
plicity  and  that  unexplained  fulness  of  truth  which 
gives  room  to  our  theology  for  variety  of  illustration 
and  expansion  of  apprehension  in  its  application  to  all 


1  See  Note  10. 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  243 


knowledge  and  to  all  departments  of  thought  and 
life. 

There  have  been  many  theological  conceptions  and 
systems  that  once  dominated  religious  thought,  that 
have  now  passed  below  the  horizon  of  the  Christian 
world ;  but  each  system  as  it  receded,  revealed  in 
clearer  light  a  truth  which  the  error,  or  the  exagger¬ 
ation,  or  the  underlying  contradiction  in  it  had  par¬ 
tially  concealed.  The  decline  of  Calvinism  has  opened 
a  deeper  conception  of  the  love  and  the  human  sym¬ 
pathy  of  God  in  Christ,  while  the  Divine  sovereignty 
and  justice  for  which  it  was  an  artificial  and  false 
defense,  remains  as  deeply  rooted  as  ever  in  Christian 
faith  and  reason. 

The  decline  of  the  doctrine  of  the  verbal  infallibility 
of  the  Bible  has  invited  the  humblest  and  the  greatest 
minds  to  its  pages ;  opening  springs  of  Divine  sym¬ 
pathy  and  lessons  for  the  lives  of  men  and  nations,  and 
living  waters  of  spiritual  life  for  earnest  souls  ;  and 
will  continue  to  do  so,  notwithstanding  the  perplex¬ 
ities  and  controversies  which  have  been  raised  over  its 
history  and  interpretation.  These  are  ephemeral,  the 
other  is  a  permanent  gain.  Wherever  freedom  of 
thought  and  speech  obtain  we  may  expect  errors, 
vagaries  and  irrational  theories  to  assume  the 
guise  of  religion,  of  scholarship,  of  philosophy,  of 
literature  and  of  politics,  but  these  are  the  acci¬ 
dental  and  the  probationary  trials  of  the  truth  on 


244  AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

its  way  through  antagonisms  to  its  final  vindica¬ 
tion. 

Progress  in  theology  is  but  a  part  of  the  general 
growth  and  spread  of  Christianity,  and  that  is  progress 
in  the  knowledge  of  Christ  as  the  Incarnate  son  of 
God.  The  reaching  forward  towards  higher  ideals  of 
goodness,  of  justice,  of  self-sacrifice  in  ourselves  and  in 
the  world  is  the  process  of  translating  Him  into  con¬ 
duct,  into  institutions,  into  philosophy,  into  life.  If 
He  is  the  full  and  final  revelation,  all  progress  in 
morality,  in  truth,  in  spirituality  and  in  righteousness 
must  be  towards  Him  and  through  Him.  In  His  reve¬ 
lation  of  sin  and  salvation,  of  God  and  of  human 
destiny  He  is  immeasurably  in  advance  of  human 
progress  and  always  will  be.  He  is  the  same,  as  the 
stars  Abraham  saw  on  the  plains  of  Shinar  are  the 
same  that  we  see.  There  are  new  astronomies  that 
tell  us  more  about  them  than  Abraham  knew,  and 
through  them  we  may  arrive  at  last  at  a  demonstra¬ 
tive  knowledge  of  the  physical  universe  ;  but  the  love 
of  Christ  and  all  that  is  comprehended  in  that  concep¬ 
tion  of  our  destiny  in  Him,  passes  knowledge  and 
always  will.  Ho  truth,  scientific  or  religious  is,  as 
many  thinkers  assume,  a  development  out  of  our  own 
minds,  nor  is  it  contemporary  with  our  discovery  of 
it.  It  is  as  old  as  creation.  Its  source  and  its  home 
is  the  mind  of  God.  Our  progressive  development  in 
knowledge  is  only  an  enlargement,  in  the  Providence 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  215 


of  God,  of  our  opportunities  and  our  powers  of  wider 
vision,  and  of  our  use  of  them  as  astronomers  see 
stars  through  the  telescope,  which  have  been  shining 
since  the  morning  of  creation  beyond  the  vision  of  the 
naked  eye.  Progress  in  religion  is  progress  in  the 
knowledge  of  Christ. 

In  relation  to  our  creeds,  it  is  said  by  some  learned 
and  thoughtful  persons  in  positions  of  authority,  that 
we  need,  in  a  few  instances,  new  forms  to  clothe  our 
essential  beliefs.  The  old  are  inadequate  and  the  ad¬ 
vance  in  knowledge  recognizes  in  them  a  contradic¬ 
tion.  “The  new  wine  bursts  the  old  bottles. ”  An 
essay  from  Dr.  Sabatier,  Dean  of  the  faculty  of 
Protestant  theology  in  Paris,  has  recently  been  intro¬ 
duced  to  English  readers  with  the  influence  of  distin¬ 
guished  persons  of  the  Church  of  England.  I  am 
convinced  that  the  English  bishops  and  clergy  who 
give  a  modified  commendation  to  the  suggestions  of 
this  essay  and  the  distinguished  writer,  are  on  an 
impractical  quest.  Dr.  Sabatier  illustrates  the 
principle  for  which  he  contends,  by  the  supposed 
variety  of  interpretations  put  upon  the  consecrated 
formulas  of  worship,  the  Apostles’  Creed  for  ex¬ 
ample,  by  believers  of  different  degrees  of  culture. 
“  I  see  a  large  assembly  gathered  in  one  of  our 
churches  for  worship.  In  this  assembly  some  are 
poor  old  women,  very  ignorant  and  somewhat  super¬ 
stitious  ;  some  are  men  of  the  middle  class,  possessing 


246  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

some  tincture  of  literature ;  some  are  wise  men  and 
philosophers  who  have  meditated  on  Kant  and  Hegel, 
and  even  professors  of  theology  who  are  penetrated 
to  the  marrow  with  the  spirit  of  criticism.  All  of 
these  bow  down  their  hearts  and  worship ;  all  speak 
the  same  tongue  learned  in  childhood ;  all  repeat  with 
heart  and  lip  :  ‘I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty.’ 
Is  there  on  earth  a  sight  more  touching  or  anything 
nearer  to  heaven?  .  .  .  The  moral  unity  spoken 

of  by  Jesus  when  He  said  ‘That  they  may  be  one, 
even  as  we  are  one,’  is  for  a  moment  realized  on  earth. 
But  do  you  suppose  that  the  word  God ,  when  it  is 
pronounced  by  all  those  lips,  summons  up  the  same 
image  to  each  one  of  those  minds  ?  To  the  old  woman, 
who  remembers  the  illuminations  of  her  large  Bible, 
the  Father  Eternal  appears  with  long,  white  beard 
and  brilliant  eyes  shining  like  coals  of  fire.  Her 
neighbor  would  smile  at  the  simplicity  of  this  an¬ 
thropomorphism.  He  has  in  his  mind  the  theistic 
idea,  as  it  was  rationally  set  forth  to  him  in  the 
course  of  lectures  of  philosophy  he  attended  at 
college.”  1 

A  novel  writer  may  inject  what  thoughts  he  chooses 
into  the  mind  of  the  character  he  creates.  If  the  old 
woman  is  a  Christian,  she  receives  her  ideas  of  God 
from  Christ,  and  who  will  say  that  the  conception  of 

1  Dr.  Sabatier,  Dean  of  Faculty,  Protestant  Theology,  Paris,  Vi¬ 
tality  Christian  Dogma,  p.  25. 


AUTHORITY — THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  247 

philosophy  which  has  been  trying  to  find  out  God 
outside  of  Christ  and  upon  postulates  of  its  own,  is 
nearer  to  reality  than  the  simplest  Christian  faith. 
The  supposed  anthropomorphism  does  not  exist.  It 
drops  away,  as  the  spiritual  truth,  which  is  present 
in  it,  is  presented  to  the  consciousness.  We  read  in 
the  Bible  that  God’s  eyes  are  in  every  place,  behold¬ 
ing  the  good  and  the  evil ;  that  His  ears  are  open  to 
the  prayers  of  the  righteous  and  His  countenance  is 
against  them  that  do  evil.  These  are  anthropo¬ 
morphic  forms  of  expressing  metaphysical  attributes 
of  omniscience  and  omnipresence ;  and  the  mind,  even 
in  its  early  stages  of  development,  never  pauses  upon 
the  anthropomorphic  form  but  instinctively  turns  to 
the  spiritual  idea.  While  the  relation  of  human 
fatherhood  cannot  be  a  literal  reproduction  of  God’s 
relation  to  us,  it  conveys  to  the  spiritual  mind  the 
reality  of  that  relation  far  more  profoundly  than  any 
word  or  any  analysis  of  the  spiritual  truth  could 
possibly  impart  to  us.  These  critics  suggest  an 
amendment  to  the  phrase  in  the  creed  Christ  “as¬ 
cended  into  heaven,”  making  heaven  in  space,  and 
implying  a  miracle  in  the  violation  of  natural  law. 
But  the  Gospel  narrative  itself  furnishes  a  reply  to 
that  suggestion  which  a  child’s  mind  could  compre¬ 
hend.  In  His  risen  body  the  appearances  of  Christ 
transcended  the  laws  of  matter,  and  impressed  the 
disciples  with  the  reality  that  He  belonged  to  the 


248  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

world  of  spirit,  and  that  His  manifestation  was  the 
sign  of  the  spiritual  body.  It  is  within  the  capacity 
of  ordinary  thought  to  forget  the  form  in  the  appre¬ 
hension  of  the  spiritual  idea  it  is  intended  to  convey. 
When  we  look  through  the  telescope  at  the  stars,  we 
are  unconscious  of  the  glass;  we  think  of  the  object, 
and  not  of  the  glass  which  reveals  it  to  us. 

The  forms  of  the  great  creeds,  through  which  we 
worship,  exhibit  no  decay  and  no  inadequacy  to  hold 
the  living  principles  of  the  Gospel ;  and  intimations 
which  might  awaken  doubts,  and  weaken  their  au¬ 
thority  and  sacredness  find  no  rational  justification. 

The  danger  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  wide-spread 
tendency  in  this  direction,  but  there  is  a  menace  to 
the  authority  of  all  churches  and  of  the  vital  principle 
of  religion  in  the  position  occupied  by  some  who  have 
been  entrusted  by  their  churches  with  the  commission 
to  teach  and  to  preach  Christianity.  They  discredit 
the  supernatural  in  religion,  and  so  teach,  in  order,  as 
they  contend,  to  bring  Christianity  into  harmony 
with  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  modern  spirit. 
They  claim  the  right  to  interpret  articles  of  the  creed, 
especially  the  statements  of  the  supernatural  birth  of 
our  Lord  and  His  resurrection  from  the  dead,  in  a 
way  subversive  of  the  historic  faith.  These  persons 
receive  salaries  and  minister  in  Christian  churches. 
Many  German  Protestant  churches  have  gone  further. 
A  hearer  in  one  of  these,  testifies,  as  quoted  by  an- 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  219 

other,  “  only  put  yourself  in  the  place  of  those  who 
had  never  received  any  other  teaching  than  that  Jesus 
was  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  suddenly  hearing  his 
pastor  in  the  church  at  Christmas  speaking  of  Joseph 
and  Mary  as  ‘  the  simple  parents  of  the  Man  of  Naza¬ 
reth  !  ’  Or  on  Easter  Sunday  morning,  of  ‘  the  de¬ 
lusion  of  the  early  Christians  that  Jesus  had  returned 
to  the  earth  from  the  grave.’  ” 

This  position,  in  a  minister  of  the  Gospel,  stands 
upon  different  grounds  from  that  which  not  a  few  lay¬ 
men  occupy,  who  from  one  cause  or  another,  have  lost 
their  faith  in  their  creeds  and  the  beliefs  of  their 
childhood,  and  who  yet  conform  to  the  outward  insti¬ 
tutions  of  the  Christian  Church.  The  position  of  the 
latter  may  be  illustrated  in  a  curious  incident  in  the 
life  of  Renan  given  in  the  Quarterly  Review  as  follows : 
“  While  Renan  was  writing  his  ‘  History  of  Israel  ’  he 
is  said  to  have  paid  a  visit  to  Bernez,  the  Jewish  ra¬ 
tionalist.  He  arrived  at  the  festival  of  the  Passover, 
and  to  his  great  surprise,  found  that  Bernez  was  keep¬ 
ing  it  with  punctilious  observance  of  the  ancient  rit¬ 
ual.  Renan  expressed  his  astonishment  that  his  friend 
should  solemnly  commemorate  the  holy  days  of  a  creed 
which  he  had  ceased  to  believe,  but  Bernez  defended 
himself,  ‘Dogma  is  a  sort  of  disunion,’  he  said,  ‘but 
ancient  ritual  observances  preserve  our  common  esprit 
de  corps.’  ” 1 

1  The  Quarterly  Review ,  London,  January,  1899,  p.  103. 


250  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

Whatever  confusion  of  thought  we  may  detect  in 
Bernez’  reply  as  to  the  relation  of  a  creed  to  a  ritual — 
for  logically  no  ritual  can  transcend  or  contradict  the 
creed  out  of  which  it  growls — it  is  true  that  there  are 
thousands  who,  with  sincerity,  occupy  a  position  anala- 
gous  to  that  of  the  Jewish  rationalist.  There  is  a  dif¬ 
ference  between  a  creed  and  worship.  A  creed  is  a 
confession  of  the  reason  and  the  faith  in  an  objective 
revelation.  Worship,  and  going  through  the  forms  of 
worship,  may  only  deal  with  subjective  feelings  that 
are  stirred  by  truths  which  are  undefined  to  the  intel¬ 
ligence.  There  are  many  who  know  not  whether  they 
believe  or  disbelieve.  They  are  afraid  to  say  “  I  be¬ 
lieve  in  the  Incarnation,  in  the  Atonement,  in  the 
Resurrection  of  the  dead.”  These  truths  look  hard 
and  cold  and  lifeless  when  they  see  them  formulated 
in  a  creed.  But  when  they  bend  in  the  Church  and 
hear  the  cry  of  the  Litany,  “  Oh  Lamb  of  God,  who 
taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world,”  something  in  them 
answers  “  Have  mercy  upon  us !  ”  When  they  are 
with  the  worshippers  on  Easter  Sunday  morning,  the 
glory  and  the  joy  appeal  to  them,  and  they  think  of 
friend  and  child  and  loved  ones  gone,  and  feel  some¬ 
how  that  they  are  not  parted  from  them  forever. 
Worship  appeals  to  the  element  of  feeling  in  faith, 
when  the  mind  cannot  yet  commit  itself  to  the  confes¬ 
sion  “  I  believe.”  Bernez  was  not,  as  he  thought  him¬ 
self,  an  out  and  out  unbeliever.  Emotions,  memories, 


AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST  251 


associations,  feelings,  undefined  convictions  all  moved 
him  to  worship  in  the  old  forms  of  his  forefathers. 
There  are  those  who  cannot  say  that  they  hold  the 
creed  of  their  forefathers.  Doubts  bewilder  and  their 
intelligence  is  perplexed.  But  the  worship  touches 
them,  though  they  have  not  laid  hold  consciously  upon 
the  objective  faith.  I  suppose  Christ  would  say  to 
such,  “  thou  art  not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God.” 
But  an  accredited  minister  of  any  church,  who  dis¬ 
credits  the  beliefs  of  that  church  and  uses  his  office  to 
pull  down  its  creed,  is  a  person  whose  ethical  position 
the  conscience  of  any  community,  that  deserves  the 
name  of  Christian,  would  repudiate  as  one  who  carries 
“  a  lie  in  his  right  hand.” 

Dishonesty  disintegrates  far  more  than  doubt. 
Character  is  greater  than  doctrine  because  it  is  doc¬ 
trine  appropriated  and  transmuted  into  life.  It  is  the 
evidence  that  gathers  into  unity  the  converging  lines 
of  testimony.  It  is  at  last  the  great  argument.  The 
fidelity  and  godly  sincerity  of  the  ministry  have  been 
from  the  beginning,  and  will  be  to  the  end,  the  potent 
factors  among  human  instrumentalities  for  the  con¬ 
version  of  men. 

As  its  mission  is  higher,  it  is  the  more  open  to  antag¬ 
onistic  influences  from  fallacies  of  exaltation  on  the 
one  side  or  discouragement  on  the  other.  We  are 
familiar  by  frequent  repetition  wflth  the  current  idea 
that  preaching  has  lost  its  power.  It  was  wTeil  enough 


252  AUTHORITY— THE  HUMANITY  OF  CHRIST 

in  past  generations  when  it  stood  almost  alone  as  the 
instrument  for  reaching  the  mind  and  the  heart  of  the 
people ;  but  the  press  with  its  multitudinous  outpour¬ 
ings  from  every  field  of  thought,  has  relegated  it  to 
the  past.  But  a  little  reflection  exposes  the  fallacy. 
The  printed  word  is  still.  The  spoken  word  is  mov¬ 
ing,  living.  As  you  are  true  and  earnest  men,  the 
difference  dawns  upon  you  when  you  listen  or  when 
you  speak.  It  is  your  heart  and  conscience  and  rea¬ 
son,  with  all  the  accessories  of  voice  and  expression, 
speaking  to  your  fellow-men.  It  can  never  be  super¬ 
seded  as  a  force  for  moving  human  beings.  As  knowl¬ 
edge  grows  among  the  masses,  and  it  is  growing,  the 
power  of  the  earnest  spoken  word  finds  avenues  to  in¬ 
telligence  and  sympathies  in  human  nature  which  are 
progressively  opened  as  ignorance  is  dissipated  by  ed¬ 
ucation.  Think  yourselves,  and  the  people  will  kindle 
with  your  thought.  Believe  yourself,  and  of  all  men 
in  the  world  you  as  the  preacher  of  Christ  have  the 
place  and  the  opportunity  to  help  men  to  believe.  Of 
all  others  you  are  the  one  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith 
that  is  in  you. 

Your  sympathy  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
these  lectures  has  imparted  to  the  duty  a  sense  of 
privilege.  May  the  blessing  of  the  Head  of  the  Church 
rest  upon  this  Seminary. 


END  OF  LECTURES 


NOTES  TO  LECTUEES 


NOTE  ONE 


THE  THEOLOGY  OF  FEELING 

Dependence  upon  feeling  for  religion  is  not  confined  to  the 
emotional  excitation  of  what  are  called  Revival  Meetings  among 
the  masses,  or  in  its  more  refined  forms  to  the  rhapsodies  of  the 
mystics,  which  are  mistaken  by  them  for  spiritual  revelation. 
Belief  in  feeling  as  the  organ  of  religious  knowledge,  as  against 
reason,  based  upon  a  supposed  distinction  between  the  intellectual 
and  emotional  elements,  is  common  in  religious  thought  and 
moulds  certain  systems  of  theology. 

In  many  writers  it  takes  the  form  of  a  direct  repudiation  of  reason 
either  in  Natural  or  Revealed  religion. 

Browning  who  is  a  religious  teacher,  as  well  as  a  poet,  says, 
with  reference  to  the  search  after  God, 

“  I  found  Him  not  in  world  or  sun. 

Or  eagle’s  wing  or  insect’s  eye  ; 

Nor  thro’  the  questions  men  may  try, 

The  petty  cobwebs  we  have  spun.” 

These  furnish  no  clue  to  the  mystery.  We  find  no  voice  of 
reason  in  Nature  to  answer  to  the  reason  within  us.  But  let  us 
throw  reason  and  faith,  which  is  dependent  upon  it,  overboard, 
and  seek  another  way. 

••  If  e’er  when  faith  had  fall’n  asleep, 

I  heard  a  voice  ‘  believe  no  more,’ 

And  heard  an  ever  breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep; 

“A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason’s  colder  part ; 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answered  *  I  have  felt.’  ” 

— In  Memoriam. 


255 


256 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


Or  again  in  the  passage  frequently  quoted, 

“  So  let  us  say — not «  Since  we  know  we  love/ 

But  rather,  Since  we  love  we  know  enough.” 

This  is  poetry  which  has  identified  the  metaphorical  form  in 
which  it  clothes  itself  with  reality.  Feeling  is  in  its  very  nature 
subjective,  and  must  be  directed  to  an  object.  Love  must  know 
the  object  it  loves,  and  in  every  act  of  loving  recognizes  the  reasons 
for  loving.  Emotion  neither  reveals  nor  creates  an  object,  but 
it  is  the  consequent  of  an  object  revealed.  Feeling  cannot  pro¬ 
duce  truth,  but  it  springs  up  the  moment  the  truth  is  made  known 
to  it.  Reason,  knowledge  must  dominate  feeling,  otherwise  as 
John  Caird  says,  “  feeling  is  at  sea.”  Animals  feel,  but  the  feeling 
ends  with  themselves.  The  attempt  to  separate  feeling  from 
reason  and  conscience  deprives  it  of  implicit  elements  which 
render  it  incapable  of  apprehending  either  religion  or  morality.  A 
moment’s  reflection  leads  to  the  admission  that  reason,  emotion 
and  will  are  organically  united  and  indissoluble  in  religion. 

The  misapprehension  in  Browning  and  many  other  writers  is 
due  to  confining  the  conception  of  reason  to  the  process  of  reason¬ 
ing,  that  is  to  the  understanding.  Reasoning  or  demonstration  can 
never  bring  a  man  to  a  religious  or  moral  life.  Botany,  which 
describes  each  stage  of  a  growing  plant,  can  never  produce  a 
living  plant.  Psychology  can  never  produce  a  mind.  Reason  in 
the  comprehensive  sense  is  implicit  in  all  of  the  faculties,  a 
balance  wheel,  the  condition  of  their  harmonious  activity. 

It  is  not  intended  to  regard  feeling  with  suspicion  or  as  a 
neglectable  quantity  in  the  philosophy  of  religion.  Feeling  con¬ 
ceived  of  as  having  in  it,  as  implicit  and  inseparable  from  it,  rea¬ 
son  and  faith,  is  indeed  the  all  of  religion,  the  active  and  central 
power  of  the  gospel.  “  Love  is  of  God,  and  he  that  loveth  is  born 
of  God  and  knoweth  God.”  Bishop  Butler,  whose  great  powers 
were  dedicated  to  proving  Christianity  to  be  reasonable,  assigns  to 
feeling  a  position  of  supreme  importance.  In  his  sermons  on  the 
love  of  God,  he  condemns  ecstasy  and  extravagance  of  emotional¬ 
ism  as  abnormal  and  illusive ;  but  on  the  other  hand,  he  has 
no  patience  with  those  who  hold  that  religion  is  all  reason  and 
no  feeling,  “under  the  notion  of  a  reasonable  religion,  so  very 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


257 


reasonable  as  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  heart  and  the 
affections.” 

Feeling,  comprehending  reason,  faith  and  hope,  is  the  love 
delineated  by  St.  Paul,  the  spirit  breathing  through  the  New 
Testament. 


NOTE  TWO 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  THE  WILL 

Philosophy  is  sensitive  to  psychology,  and  theology  in  its 
essence  is  the  philosophy  of  religion,  and  therefore  must  respond 
to  influences  from  the  views  we  hold  about  the  different  faculties 
of  our  minds,  and  the  share  of  each  in  our  mental  operations  as 
they  appear  in  consciousness.  Dr.  James,  of  Harvard,  contributes 
from  psychology,  his  special  science,  his  theory  of  belief  in  religion 
to  strengthen  the  theology  of  the  will. 

He  has  the  rare  merit  of  translating  religious  and  philosophical 
speculation  into  language  and  illustration  comprehensible  to  minds 
of  ordinary  education.  It  must  be  remembered,  in  reading  his 
book,  that  he  is  lecturing  to  a  body  of  students  and  to  a  popular 
audience. 

Upon  religion,  as  an  act  of  choice,  he  has  the  following  admi¬ 
rable  passage.  “Religion  is  a  forced  option -  We  cannot 

escape  the  issue  by  remaining  sceptical  and  waiting  for  more  light, 
because,  although  we  do  avoid  error  in  that  way  if  religioji  be  un¬ 
true,  we  lose  the  good  if  it  be  true ,  just  as  certainly  as  if  we 
positively  choose  to  disbelieve.  It  is  as  if  a  man  should  hesitate  in¬ 
definitely  to  ask  a  certain  woman  to  marry  him  because  he  was 
no*  perfectly  sure  that  she  would  prove  an  angel  after  he  brought 
her  home.  Would  he  not  cut  himself  off  from  that  particular 
an~el — possibly  as  decisively  as  if  he  went  and  married  some  one 
els*  ?  Scepticism  then  is  not  an  avoidance  of  option  ;  it  is  option 
of  a  certain  particular  kind  of  risk.  Better  risk  loss  of  truth  than 
chance  of  error,  that  is  your  faith-vetoer’s  exact  position.” 

Again  in  “Is  Life  Worth  Living?”  “faith  makes  result  come 
truu.  Not  a  victory  is  gained,  not  a  deed  of  faithfulness  or 
courage  is  done  except  upon  a  maybe  ;  not  a  service,  not  a  sally 


258 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


of  generosity,  not  a  scientific  exploration,  or  experiment,  or  text¬ 
book,  that  may  not  be  a  mistake.  It  is  only  by  risking  our 
persons  from  one  hour  to  another  that  we  live  at  all.  And  often 
enough  our  faith  beforehand  in  an  uncertified  result  is  the  only 
thing  that  makes  the  result  come  true.  Suppose,  for  instance, 
that  you  are  climbing  a  mountain,  and  have  worked  yourself 
into  a  position  from  which  the  only  escape  is  a  terrible  leap.  Have 
faith  that  you  can  make  it,  and  your  feet  are  nerved  to  its  accom¬ 
plishment.  But  mistrust  yourself  and  think  of  all  the  sweet  things 
you  have  heard  the  scientists  say  of  maybes ,  and  you  will  hesitate 
so  long  that,  at  last  all  unstrung  and  trembling,  and  launching 
yourself  in  a  moment  of  despair,  you  roll  into  the  abyss.  In  such 
a  case  (and  it  belongs  to  an  enormous  class),  the  part  of  wisdom 
as  well  as  of  courage,  is  to  believe  what  is  in  the  line  of  your 
needs,  for  only  by  such  belief  is  the  need  fulfilled.  Refuse  to  be¬ 
lieve,  and  you  shall  indeed  be  right,  for  you  shall  irretrievably 
perish.  But  believe,  and  again  you  shall  be  right,  for  you  shall 
save  yourself.  You  make  one  or  the  other  of  two  possible  uni¬ 
verses  true  or  untrue  by  your  trust  or  mistrust ;  both  universes 
having  been  only  maybes,  in  this  particular,  before  you  contrib¬ 
ute  your  act.” 

Doubtless  the  function  of  the  will  in  the  formation  of  beliefs, 
is  destined  to  wider  recognition  than  it  has  yet  received,  and  the 
advance  in  this  department  of  psychology  will  contribute  abundant 
illustration  to  exposition  of  Scripture.  But  a  religious  philosophy 
which  designates  the  will  as  the  master,  and  the  other  faculties  of 
the  mind  as  servants  which  may  be  dispensed  with  at  pleasure,  is 
one  which  may  justify  antinomianism,  or  extreme  individualism 
in  religion,  where  every  man  may  claim  to  believe  whatever  he 
chooses  to  believe,  and  be  church  and  creed  and  an  objective 
revelation  to  himself.  The  faculties  of  the  mind  are  dependent 
and  cooperative.  Will,  faith,  reason,  conscience  and  authority,  are 
all  represented  in  every  act  of  decision.  The  will  does  not  move 
in  the  direction  of  religion  except  under  the  impulse  of  moral  and 
spiritual  affinities.  Behind  the  will  is  the  spiritual  intelligence,  the 
conscience  and  the  sense  of  need.  If  these  are  not,  the  will  is 
motionless.  John  Caird  says,  “  The  conflict  of  nature  and  spirit, 
of  impulse  and  reason,  of  the  lower  and  the  higher  self,  is  one 
from  which,  for  a  rational  and  self-conscious  being,  there  can  be 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


259 


no  escape.  But  it  is  just  through  this  conflict  that  its  spiritual 
development  is  attained.  Moral  and  spiritual  perfection  cannot 
come  to  us  by  nature,  but  only  as  the  result  of  struggle  and  self- 
conquest.” 

The  alliance  of  the  will  with  either  one  of  these  forces  may  be 
the  decisive  factor  in  human  destiny  ;  but  that  is  a  different 
proposition  from  assigning  to  the  will  the  absolute  determination 
of  belief. 


NOTE  THREE 

MIND  IN  NATURE  :  EVOLUTION 

“  The  reason  that  lives  in  nature,  speaks  a  language  that  the 
reason  personalized  in  man  can  understand  and  translate.  The 
mathematics  which  have  controlled  and  guided  the  Builder  of  the 
heavens,  are  identical  with  the  mathematics  which  the  astronomer, 
in  his  study,  deduces  from  the  idea  of  space  given  in  his  own 
thought,  and  which  he  proves  by  the  processes  of  his  own  reason. 
If  he  looks  at  the  correspondence  from  the  subjective  or  dialectical 
side,  he  may  say  with  Plato,  ‘  The  creator  in  His  act  of  creation 
has  geometrized  ’  ;  but  if  he  regard  it  from  its  objective  or  obser¬ 
vational  side,  he  will  say  with  Kepler,  4  In  reading  the  secrets  of 
nature,  I  am  thinking  the  thoughts  of  God  after  Him.’  But 
whether  he  speaks  with  Plato  or  with  Kepler,  he  means  the  same 
thing  ;  there  is  such  a  correspondence  between  the  mind  and  the 
universe,  between  the  intelligible  we  think,  and  the  intellect  we 
think  by,  that  their  relation  can  only  be  explained  by  identity  of 
source,  zF  <?.,  by  both  being  expressions  of  a  single  supreme 
intelligence.”  Fairbairn,  Philosophy  of  the  Christian  Religion, 
P-  37- 

It  is  common  among  writers  who  have  adopted  the  theory  of 
creation  by  the  method  of  evolution,  to  disparage  the  argument 
of  design  in  nature  as  illustrated  by  Paley  in  the  opening  of  the 
evidences  of  Christianity,  as  anthropomorphic  and  degrading  to 
our  conception  of  the  creator  of  the  universe,  who  is  likened  to  a 
builder,  after  the  manner  of  the  carpenter  or  the  watchmaker. 
Such  criticism  is  as  unfriendly  to  any  intelligible  theory  of  evolu- 


260 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


tion  as  it  is  to  Paley’s  argument.  Such  writers  would  take  excep¬ 
tions  upon  the  same  ground  to  Dr.  Fairbairn’s  statement  in  the 
above  passage,  when  he  speaks  of  the  builder  of  the  universe  using 
the  same  mathematics  as  employed  by  the  astronomer  in  his  cal¬ 
culations  ;  or  to  Plato’s  words,  “  The  creator,  in  his  act  of  creation, 
has  geometrized.”  The  misunderstanding  with  such  writers  is  due 
to  confusion  of  thought,  both  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  argument 
from  design  and  the  meaning  of  evolution.  They  attack  the 
argument  upon  the  assumption  that  Paley  and  Christian  philoso¬ 
phers  contend  for  the  identity,  both  as  to  methods  of  causation  and 
the  mode  in  which  the  work  is  done  in  man’s  works,  and  in  God’s 
works  in  nature.  But  it  requires  only  a  little  reflection  to  see  that 
this  is  an  entirely  different  question  from  that  which  Paley  and 
other  writers  in  the  same  line  are  discussing.  Is  there  evidence  of 
design,  of  intelligent  purpose  and  of  adjustment  to  accomplish  that 
purpose  manifested  in  the  works  of  nature,  such  as  we  are  con¬ 
scious  of  in  our  own  minds  ?  Do  we  recognize  in  nature  the  presence 
of  mind  in  the  adjustment  of  means  to  ends,  just  as  clearly  as  we 
recognize  the  operations  of  our  own  intelligence  as  they  appear  in 
consciousness  in  designing  and  contriving  to  accomplish  a  certain 
purpose  when  we  work  upon,  the  materials  that  nature  has  put  in 
our  hands  for  our  use  ?  This  is  the  only  question  Paley  is  dis¬ 
cussing.  The  mode  in  which  God  works  in  nature  is  a  different 
question.  That  is  as  distinct  from  the  mode  and  the  means  we 
are  obliged  to  use  to  do  our  work,  as  God,  with  His  infinite  wisdom 
and  power  and  resources,  is  above  us. 

The  difference  between  our  works,  and  God’s  works  in  nature, 
is  the  difference  between  a  house  and  a  plant.  We  collect  the 
materials,  and  calculate  dimensions,  and  form  the  plans  and  fit 
one  part  into  another ;  then  with  labor  and  care  and  time  we  put 
the  parts  together.  We  work  by  labor,  manipulation,  mechanism. 
We  work,  so  to  speak,  from  the  outside.  God  works  from  the 
inside.  He  is  the  Author  of  life,  of  the  materials  that  feed  life,  of 
the  forces  that  organize  the  materials  into  structures.  His  mind, 
His  will  is  in  them  all,  and  over  them  all.  There  are  no  hands 
at  work  in  nature.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  visible  construc¬ 
tion  in  the  world  around  us.  All  things  grow  from  seed.  The 
seed  has  in  it  the  life,  and  the  materials,  and  the  forces,  with 
the  design  planted  in  it.  Each  stage  of  its  growth  has  in  it  the 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


261 


promise,  the  power  and  the  plan  of  the  succeeding  stage.  God 
works  by  growth.  If  evolution  means  anything,  it  means  growth  ; 
and  growth  has  in  it  the  evidence  of  the  highest  purpose,  and 
of  omnipotent  mind.  The  principle  of  mind  and  of  purpose  in 
the  works  of  God  in  nature  is  precisely  the  same  as  in  the  works  of 
man.  But  the  difference  in  the  methods  is  measured  by  the 
difference  in  power  and  wisdom  between  the  finite  and  the 
infinite.  If  we  had  the  power  to  make  life,  that  life  would  carry 
mind  with  it  as  one  of  its  vital  principles,  and  to  that  mind  the 
forces  of  nature  would  yield  obedience  spontaneous  and  absolute. 


NOTE  FOUR 

RELATIONS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  TO  THE  RELIGIONS  OF  THE  WORLD 

The  sympathetic  and  systematic  study  of  the  religions  of  the 
world  by  Christian  scholars,  in  the  science  of  Comparative  Relig¬ 
ions,  has  refuted  the  view  of  natural  religions  as  unmixed  im¬ 
postures  created  by  credulity  and  superstition.  The  advance  in 
thought  has  been  a  return  to  the  revelation  of  the  New  Testament 
that  these  religions  are  expressions  of  the  spiritual  wants  and 
aspirations  of  the  religious  instincts  of  the  race. 

“  In  even  savage  bosoms 
There  are  longings,  desires,  strivings 
For  the  good  they  comprehend  not.” 

The  result  can  only  be  hopeful  and  encouraging  to  the  mission¬ 
ary  activities  of  the  Christian  Church  throughout  the  world. 

Rev.  Frederic  W.  Maurice,  in  his  “  Religions  of  the  World,” 
has  in  his  reply  to  arguments  against  Christian  missions,  the  most 
powerful  thinking  upon  the  subject  in  British  religious  literature. 

Dr.  G.  Matheson,  in  “  Messages  of  the  Old  Religions,”  has  sug¬ 
gestions  of  value  and  many  eloquent  passages. 

Professor  Campbell’s  “  Religions  in  Greek  Literature,”  and  the 
Religious  Spirit  of  Hellenism,  is  an  elaborate  and  masterly 
work  of  great  literary  and  scholarly  ability. 

Principal  Caird,  in  his  “  Philosophy  of  Religion,”  has  the  fol- 


2G2 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


lowing  noble  passage  at  the  close  of  the  chapter  on  Philosophy 
and  History.  “Christianity  neither  borrows  nor  reproduces  the 
imperfect  notions  of  God,  be  they  what  they  may — pantheistic, 
dualistic,  anthropomorphic,  monotheistic — in  which  the  religious 
aspirations  of  the  old  world  had  embodied  themselves.  In  the 
light  of  this  idea  we  can  perceive  these  imperfect  notions  yielding 
up  whatever  element  of  truth  lay  hid  in  them,  whilst  that  which 
was  arbitrary  and  false  falls  away  and  dies.  If,  for  example,  the 
old  Pantheistic  idea  that  the  things  that  are  seen  are  temporal,  and 
that  beneath  all  the  passing  shadows  and  semblances  of  things 
there  is  an  enduring  substance,  a  reality  that  is  without  variable¬ 
ness  or  shadow  of  turning  ;  if  this  idea  comes  to  light  again  in  the 
Christian  consciousness,  yet  the  new  Pantheism  does  not,  like  the 
old,  suppress,  but  rather  elicits  and  quickens  the  individuality, 
the  freedom,  the  moral  life  of  man.  If  it  says,  “  The  world  pass- 
eth  away  and  the  lust  thereof,”  it  says  also  “  He  that  doeth  the 
will  of  God  abideth  forever.”  If  the  antagonism  between  good 
and  evil  which  gave  Dualism  its  meaning  and  power,  survives  in 
the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  yet  the  new  Dualism,  unlike  that 
of  the  old  religion,  is  consistent  with  the  belief,  not  only  of  the 
ultimate  triumph,  but  in  the  sole  and  absolute  reality  of  good.  If 
it  asserts  that  “  Sin  hath  entered  the  world  and  death  by  sin,” 
yet  it  declares  that  “all  things  are  of  God,”  and  that  “all  things 
work  together  for  good  to  them  that  love  Him,”  and  that  a  time  is 
coming  when  “  God  shall  be  all  in  all.”  If  Christianity  claims  as 
its  own  that  idea  which  anthropomorphic  religion  foreshadowed — 
that  man  is  the  image  of  God,  and  that  he  is  capable  of  rising  into 
the  Divine  fellowship  and  of  being  made  “partaker  of  the  Divine 
nature,”  yet  in  contrast  with  the  old  religions  it  raises  the  human 
without  limiting  or  lowering  the  Divine,  and  sees  in  all  earthly 
goodness  a  reflection  of  the  nature  of  God  without  making  the  na¬ 
ture  of  God  a  reflection  of  the  weaknesses  and  imperfections  of 
man.  Lastly,  if  Christianity  contains,  in  common  with  Monotheis¬ 
tic  religions,  the  idea  of  God  elevated  in  His  absolute  being  above 
the  world,  unaffected  by  its  limits,  incapable  of  being  implicated 
in  its  imperfections,  it  yet  enables  us  at  the  same  time  to  think  of 
God,  not  merely  as  an  Omnipotent  Power  and  Will  above  us,  but 
as  an  Infinite  Love  within  us.  It  sees  in  our  purest  thoughts  and 
holiest  actions  God  Himself,  “working  in  us  to  will  and  to  do  of 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


263 


His  good  pleasure.”  It  tells  us  that  “our  bodies  are  the  temples 
of  His  Holy  Spirit,”  and  it  sets  before  us  a  human  life  as  the  full¬ 
est  expression  and  revelation  of  the  nature  and  the  life  of  God. 
Thus  whatever  elements  of  truth,  whatever  broken  and  scattered 
rays  of  light  the  old  religions  contained,  Christianity  takes  up  into 
itself,  explaining  all,  harmonizing  all,  by  a  Divine  alchemy  trans¬ 
muting  all,  yet  immeasurably  transcending  all - gathering  to¬ 

gether  in  one  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth,  in  its  revelation  of 
One  who  is  at  one  and  the  same  time,  Father,  Son  and  Spirit, 
above  all,  through  all  and  in  all. 


NOTE  FIVE 

PREVALENCE  OF  NESCIENCE  PHILOSOPHY 

Mr.  John  Fiske,  in  several  of  his  essays  published  under  the 
title  “A  Century  of  Science,”  and  also  in  his  “  Excursions  of  an 
Evolutionist,”  alludes  to  the  wide  acceptance  of  the  Spencerian 
philosophy  by  the  people  of  America.  Enthusiastic  disciples  of 
new  theories  in  philosophy  are  liable  to  exaggerated  impressions  of 
the  prevalence  of  their  opinions  among  the  people.  It  will  be  re¬ 
membered  that  Mr.  Spencer  was  entertained  at  a  banquet  in  the 
city  of  New  York  on  the  eve  of  his  return  to  England  after  his  visit 
to  America.  The  account  states  that  there  were  a  hundred  gentle¬ 
men  present  including  presidents  of  colleges,  scientific  men, 
authors,  clergymen  and  journalists  of  note,  and  many  distinguished 
politicians  and  lawyers.  The  sentiment,  for  the  evening,  greeting 
Mr.  Spencer  was  as  follows:  “We  recognize  in  your  knowledge 
greater  comprehensiveness  than  in  that  of  any  other  living  man, 
or  than  has  been  presented  by  any  one  in  our  generation.” 

The  sweeping  character  of  this  expression  of  admiration  and  of 
enthusiastic  confidence  in  the  doctrines  of  Mr.  Spencer’s  philos¬ 
ophy,  is  not  entitled  to  the  value  put  upon  it  by  Mr.  Spencer’s  dis¬ 
ciples.  Criticism  of  Religion  and  Philosophy  is  a  slow  process, 
which  extends  through  generations  ;  and  sentiments  expressed  at 
social  functions  in  honor  of  a  distinguished  foreigner  by  his  kind- 
hearted  hosts,  who  knew  much  more  of  banquets  than  of  philoso¬ 
phy,  are  without  significance  in  relation  to  educated  American 


264 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


thought,  or  as  expressions  of  their  own  personal  convictions.  Busy 
merchants  and  tired  lawyers,  and  even  college  presidents,  would 
hardly  have  ventured  seriously  to  express  their  opinions  upon 
questions  and  problems  in  the  realm  of  mind  and  spirit,  which 
have  engaged  the  attention  of  the  greatest  minds  of  all  ages. 

Mr.  Fiske,  himself,  who  was  largely  instrumental  in  the  intro¬ 
duction  of  Mr.  Spencer’s  philosophy  to  the  American  public, 
abandoned  the  agnostic  faith  in  the  closing  years  of  his  life,  and 
arrayed  himself  on  the  side  of  Christianity  in  its  revelation  of  a 
future  life. 

It  may  be  asserted  with  truth,  that  the  philosophy  of  agnosticism 
has  had  its  day  ;  certainly,  that  the  great  journals  of  British 
thought  and  the  exponents  of  British  scholarship,  now  the  strong¬ 
est  and  the  most  reasonable  of  the  world,  are  passing  it  by  as  con¬ 
tradictory  and  unthinkable. 


NOTE  SIX 

AGNOSTICISM 

The  ordinary  conception  of  the  meaning  of  the  term  is  the 
simple  idea  of  negation.  It  is  the  assertion  of  ignorance  from  lack 
of  evidence.  But  this  conception  is  evidently  an  illusion  which 
conveys  the  idea  of  harmless  intellectual  modesty  and  reasonable¬ 
ness  in  the  system  which  goes  by  the  name. 

What  is  Mr.  Spencer’s  whole  system  of  philosophy,  unfolded  in 
many  volumes  upon  every  variety  of  philosophical  subjects,  but  a 
labored  attempt  to  prove  positively  that  God  is  unknowable,  to 
break  down  revelation,  to  demonstrate  that  it  is  impossible. 

Dr.  Orr,  in  his  work  “The  Christian  View  of  God  and  the 
World,”  a  most  valuable  contribution  to  theological  literature, 
quotes  Professor  Huxley’s  definition  of  Agnosticism.  He  says, 
“  Professor  Huxley, the  inventor  of  the  term”  (Agnosticism)  “has 
given  us  his  explanation  of  it.  *  Agnosticism  ’  he  says,  ‘  in  fact 
is  not  a  creed  but  a  method,  the  essence  of  which  lies  in  the  rigor¬ 
ous  application  of  a  single  principle.’  .  .  .  Positively,  the 

principle  may  be  thus  expressed  ;  in  matters  of  the  intellect  follow 
your  reason  as  far  as  it  will  take  you,  without  regard  to  any  other 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


265 


consideration.  And  negatively,  in  matters  of  the  intellect,  do  not 
pretend  that  conclusions  are  certain  which  are  not  demonstrated 
or  demonstrable.  That  I  take  to  be  the  Agnostic  faith,  which  if  a 
man  keep  whole  and  undefiled,  he  shall  not  be  ashamed  to  look 
the  universe  in  the  face,  whatever  the  future  may  have  in  store  for 
him.”  “Agnosticism,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  February, 
1899.”  This,  however  is  not  a  faith,  as  he  says,  but  a  method, 
which  in  its  application  may  yield  positive  or  negative  results  as 
the  case  may  be.  Behind  it  at  the  same  time,  lies,  in  his  case,  the 
conviction,  that  real  answers  to  the  great  questions  of  religion  are 
“not  merely  impossible,  but  theoretically  inconceivable.”  Ibid, 
p.  182. 


NOTE  SEVEN 

IMAGINATION  DELUSIVE  FACULTY 

Bishop  Butler’s  warning  against  imagination  as  “  the  author 
of  all  error,”  needs  some  explanation,  in  justice  to  his  psychology. 
Mr.  Gladstone  has  the  following  comment  upon  the  passage  where 
the  expression  occurs,  in  the  First  Chapter  of  the  Analogy  : 

“  It  is  singular  that  what  Butler  denounces  is  not  *  the  imagina¬ 
tion,’  but  ‘  imagination,’  as  if  he  were  dealing  with  a  process  rather 
than  a  faculty.  But  we  can  hardly  dwell  upon  this  since  he  pro¬ 
ceeds  to  describe  it  as  a  faculty  ;  and,  moreover,  assigns  to  it  a 
*  sphere.’  The  mischievous  products  of  this  abusive  practice  were, 
we  must  suppose,  those  of  which  Butler  was  cognizant,  and  with 
which  he  deals  so  largely  in  his  work.  But  these,  mentioned 
almost  in  every  page,  are  not  in  truth  errors  of  the  imagination, 
but  of  unbridled  fancy  and  caprice  ;  of  unbalanced,  ill-regulated 
judgment.  It  seems  probable  that  this  is  one  of  the  rare  instances 
in  which  Butler,  relaxing  the  firmness  of  his  hold,  forgets  himself 
and  assumes  license  in  the  use  of  words.  Sometimes,  though 
rarely,  he  deals  with  schemes  purely  metaphysical ;  but  these,  if 
erroneous,  are  not  errors  of  the  imagination  properly  so  called. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  contrary  to  his  custom,  throughout  his  work 
upon  Butler,  hardly  does  him  justice,  in  this  passage,  and  in  his 
explanation  is  inadequate. 


266 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


Butler  is  opening  his  Analogy  with  the  chapter  upon  a  future 
life  which  he  devotes  to  a  reply  to  the  arguments  against  life  after 
the  death  of  the  body.  He  calls  these  arguments  “imaginary 
presumptions,”  which  “silence  the  voice  of  reason.”  He  is  not 
giving  a  psychological  definition  of  imagination,  but  he  alludes  to 
it  as  a  “  delusive  faculty  ”  in  its  effect  upon  beliefs  in  unseen  things, 
in  spiritual  realities.  The  future  life  is  in  the  unseen.  Imagina¬ 
tion  can  give  no  picture  of  it,  therefore  it  fails  and  breaks  down. 
It  identifies  reality  with  what  it  has  seen,  and  therefore  to  a  mind 
which  has  formed  the  habit  of  depending  upon  the  imagination  for 
its  beliefs,  it  is  helpless  because  it  can  form  no  picture  of  the 
unseen.  I  think  this  is  Butler’s  meaning  and  if  so,  as  is  not  un¬ 
usual  with  him,  he  is  right. 

The  Duke  of  Argyle  in  the  “  Unity  of  Nature,”  defines  imagina¬ 
tion  as  “the  mental  power  by  which  we  handle  the  elementary 
conceptions,  derived  from  our  mental  constitution,  in  contact  and 
in  harmony  with  external  things,  and  by  which  we  recombine 
these  conceptions  in  an  endless  variety  of  forms.” 

This  definition  is  true  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  cannot  be  accepted 
as  a  full  expression  of  the  powers  and  scope  of  imagination.  Im¬ 
agination  is  founded  upon  memory,  but  it  is  something  more  than 
memory.  The  power  of  memory  supplies  the  substance  which 
imagination  works  up  into  its  fabrics  ;  the  stones  and  the  timber 
which  it  uses  in  the  construction  of  its  buildings.  It  has  no  power 
to  create  materials,  but  only  to  combine  them  in  endless  varieties, 
at  the  same  time  calling  in  reason  and  the  other  faculties  to  its  aid. 
Imagination  is  not  only  dependent  upon  memory  for  the  materials 
of  its  creations,  but  it  is  largely  dependent  upon  feeling.  It  de¬ 
rives  the  inspiration  which  quickens  its  activity  from  sentiment. 
One  mind  is  cold  in  the  presence  of  an  object ;  another  is  kindled 
with  sympathetic  intelligence  and  emotion.  In  the  former  the 
representation  of  the  object  which  memory  recalls  is  cold  and 
dull  ;  in  the  other  it  is  warm  and  lifelike.  Both  for  the  memory 
which  furnishes  the  materials  and  for  the  imagination  which  works 
them  up  into  new  creations,  the  power  of  feeling  is  the  quality 
which  measures  the  difference  between  a  dull  and  a  vivid  im¬ 
agination.  Again  imagination  is  not  confined  for  its  materials  to 
conceptions  of  external  objects  furnished  it  by  memory  or  by 
direct  observation.  It  may  use  ideas  and  motives  and  feelings 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


267 


which  appear  in  consciousness.  It  may  add  to  them  or  subtract 
from  them,  reproducing  them  in  other  forms,  interpreting  them  in 
other  relations,  and  this  wide  range  of  imagination  needs  a  wider 
definition  than  that  of  the  Duke  of  Argyle. 

Imagination  is  thus  creative  and  active.  It  is  a  power  which 
enables  us  with  the  materials  in  our  own  minds  to  go  out  of  our¬ 
selves  and  see  into  the  minds  of  others,  and  feel  their  sorrows  and 
understand  their  wants. 

It  is  a  powerful  ally  of  the  reason  in  its  capacity  to  form  an 
image  of  things,  so  that  the  reason  can  see  the  relation  of  the  parts 
and  form  a  conception  of  the  whole. 

In  some  of  these  higher  functions  it  is  so  near  to  the  reason  that, 
as  Mozley  says  with  penetrative  insight,  we  come  unconsciously 
and  practically  “to  identify  it  with  reason”  and  to  mistake  its 
verdict  for  reason’s  verdict. 

When  mistaken  for  reason  it  becomes  a  powerful  obstacle  both 
to  reason  and  faith  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  things.  Apart  from 
Revelation  and  from  Jesus  Christ,  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,  man 
instinctively  seeks  to  grasp  the  idea  of  the  personality  of  God.  He 
calls  in  his  imagination  to  construct  a  conception  of  God’s  person¬ 
ality,  but  at  once  he  is  foiled.  Imagination  can  make  no  head¬ 
way.  God  is  a  spirit  and  inconceivable  under  the  forms  of  matter. 
Again  we  stand  in  the  presence  of  Death,  with  the  still  form,  the 
helpless  hands,  the  cold  passivity  of  inorganic  matter  from  which 
the  life  has  fled.  The  imagination  gives  way.  It  can  form  no  con¬ 
ception  of  disembodied  spirit.  It  yields  to  the  impressions  of  sense 
and  is  powerless  to  transcend  them,  and  yet  it  is  in  relation  to  such 
subjects  identified  with  reason.  The  passive  imagination  thus  be¬ 
comes  a  powerful  ally  for  scepticism  and  materialistic  negation. 
It  requires  but  little  reflection  to  understand  that  in  relation  to 
spiritual  things  this  form  of  imagination  is  the  most  fruitful  source 
of  delusion  and  unbelief  to  the  human  mind.  Even  the  most  well 
regulated  minds  are  conscious  of  the  tendency.  This  is  the  im¬ 
agination  which  Butler  repudiates,  and  against  which  his  chapter 
on  the  Future  Life  is  directed. 

Canon  Mozley’s  chapter  in  the  Bampton  Lectures  on  the  Influ¬ 
ence  of  Imagination  upon  Belief,  is  worthy  of  careful  study. 


263 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


NOTE  EIGHT 

BALFOUR  AND  PROFESSOR  WALLACE  ON  REASON 

"  What  kind  of  a  universe  would  that  be  which  we  could  under¬ 
stand  ?  If  it  were  intelligible  (by  us)  would  it  be  credible  ?  ”  Bal¬ 
four,  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  279. 

“  What  were  a  world  which  we  did  not  understand,  had  not  in 
any  measure  understood  ?  A  world  full  of  fears  rather  than  hopes  ; 
a  perpetual  uncertainty  ;  a  grisly  mystery,  which  made  darkness 
cover  the  earth  and  gross  darkness  its  peoples.  The  world  which 
reason  claims  is  one  where  she  may  go  forever  on  and  never 
die  ;  a  world  where  nothing  can  be  called  utterly  unknowable, 
though  much  may  remain  forever  unknown ;  a  world  where,  as  hu¬ 
manity  accumulates  more  and  more  its  intellectual  and  spiritual 
capital,  we  shall  move  about  more  and  more  freely,  i.  e.,  more  and 
more  wisely,  as  becomes  those  who  are  called  to  inherit  the  king¬ 
dom.’1  Gifford  Lectures,  Professor  Wallace,  p.  9 7. 


NOTE  NINE 

CAUSES  OF  ASCETICISM 

The  literal  interpretation  of  the  severe  maxims  of  the  New  Tes¬ 
tament  of  privation  and  sacrifice  and  entire  separation  from  the 
world,  may  have  been  necessary,  and  if  necessary,  must  have 
been  intended,  during  the  first  proclamation  of  Christianity  in  the 
heathen  world.  We  in  a  Christian  land,  the  inheritors  of  the  edu¬ 
cation  of  Christianity  for  two  thousand  years,  have  only  the  faint¬ 
est  conception  of  the  dead  conscience  and  the  moral  insensibility 
of  paganism.  To  arouse  it  from  its  slumber  necessarily  involved 
a  shock  to  the  social  order.  The  inward  transformation  of  char¬ 
acter  demanded  a  break  with  the  established  customs  and  order 
of  human  life.  To  impress  the  heathen  mind  it  was  necessary  to 
disparage  the  seen  and  to  exalt  the  unseen.  But  this  principle 
carried  to  the  literal  extreme,  which  resulted  in  asceticism,  would 
have  necessarily  destroyed  Christianity  in  the  home  of  its  birth. 
Christ  came,  not  to  destroy  God’s  order  for  the  world,  but  to  fulfil 
it  by  imparting  to  human  nature  the  spirit  of  regeneration  which 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


269 


would  enter  into  and  transform  every  human  relation.  The  love 
of  the  world  against  which  Christians  are  warned  is  not  society  and 
the  conditions  and  activities  which  are  necessary  to  its  preser¬ 
vation.  Christians  in  the  New  Testament  are  commanded  not  to 
go  to  law  ;  but  law  is  necessary  to  human  society,  and  without  law 
communities  and  nations  gravitate  back  to  barbarism.  Trade,  in¬ 
dustry,  care  for  the  future,  accumulation  of  wealth,  government, 
war  in  defense  of  rights,  all  these  things  are  necessary  ;  all  are 
recognized  in  the  New  Testament  and  they  are  recognized  by  the 
Christian  Church  as  provinces  of  human  life  to  be  conquered  and 
redeemed  by  the  spirit  of  Christ.  But  the  principles  underneath 
these  apparently  stern  and  impractical  denunciations  of  the  New 
Testament  of  conformity  to  the  world,  are  as  true  to-day  as  they 
were  when  the  Christian  Church  was  a  little  centre  of  light,  with 
the  whole  world  around  it  in  darkness  and  degradation. 

A  passage  from  Dean  Church  contains  an  eloquent  expression 
of  what  is  meant  when  it  is  said,  that  notwithstanding  the  sympathy 
of  Christianity  with  everything  that  belongs  to  the  order  of  human 
life  and  the  progress  of  society,  its  essential  principle  of  unworld¬ 
liness  must  be  the  same  in  all  ages.  In  his  “  Gifts  of  Civilization,” 
he  says,  “The  Christian  spirit  is  free  spirit,  and  has,  we  believe, 
affinities  with  strangely  opposite  extremes.  It  can  ally  itself  with 
riches  as  well  as  with  poverty  ;  with  the  life  of  the  statesman  and  the 
soldier,  as  well  as  of  the  priest  ;  with  the  most  energetic,  as  well  as 
with  the  most  retired  life  ;  with  vastness  of  thought,  with  richness 
of  imagination,  with  the  whole  scale  of  feeling,  as  well  as  with  the 
simplest  character  and  the  humblest  obedience.  It  can  bear  the 
purple  and  fine  linen  ;  it  can  bear  power  ;  it  can  bear  the  strain 
and  absorption  of  great  undertakings.  But  there  is  one  thing  with 
which  it  will  not  combine.  Its  antagonist  is  selfishness.  Be  it 
where  it  may,  it  is  the  spirit  which  is  ready  in  one  way  or  another 
to  give  itself  for  worthy  and  noble  reasons.  As  long  as  the  New 
Testament  is  believed  in,  we  must  believe  that  the  Christian  spirit 
is  that  which  seeks  not  its  own,  which  is  not  careful  to  speak  its 
own  words,  or  find  its  own  pleasure,  or  do  its  own  ways.  It  is  not 
merely  the  spirit  of  self-denial  and  sacrifice  ;  it  is  the  spirit  of  self- 
denial  and  sacrifice  for  the  great  objects  put  before  it.  For  the 
great  and  rare  thing  is  when  purpose  and  self-denial  answer  to  one 
another,  and  one  by  its  greatness  justifies  the  other,  and  animates  it. 


270 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


Doubtless  it  is  hard  to  have  self-denial ;  but  it  is  harder  still  to 
have  a  great  object  which  shall  make  self-denial  itself  fall  into  a 
subordinate  place,  indispensable  there,  but  not  thought  much  of 
for  its  own  sake.  The  heroic  mind  and  the  Christian  mind  are 
shown  not  simply  in  the  loss  of  all  things,  in  giving  up  this  world, 
in  accepting  pain  and  want,  but  in  doing  this,  if  it  must  be  done, 
for  that  for  which  it  is  worth  a  man’s  while  to  do  it ;  for  something 
of  corresponding  greatness,  though  unseen  ;  for  truth,  for  faith,  for 
duty,  for  the  good  of  others,  for  a  higher  life.  And  this  view  the 
words  of  the  New  Testament  keep  continually  before  us.  There 
is  plenty  of  temptation  to  give  up  the  heroic  standard.  It  often 
fails.  It  is  easily  counterfeited.  Its  failure  is  scandalous.  And 
not  only  our  self-indulgence,  but  our  suspicion  and  hatred  of  in¬ 
sincere  pretense,  our  moderation  and  common  sense  bid  us  con¬ 
tent  ourselves  with  something  short  of  it,  and  take  our  aim  by  what 
we  call  our  nature.  But  the  New  Testament  will  not  meet  us  here. 
The  heroic  standard  is  the  only  one  it  will  countenance  for  its  own, 
as  proportionate  to  the  greatness  of  its  disclosures.  It  is  a  stand¬ 
ard  which  lends  itself  to  very  varied  conditions.  It  may  be  owned 
in  society  or  out  of  it ;  in  solitude  or  in  the  press  of  affairs  ;  in  secret 
wrestlings  or  in  open  conduct ;  by  the  poor  and  ignorant  or  the 
great  and  wise.  But  everywhere  it  makes  the  same  call.  Every¬ 
where  it  implies  really  great  thoughts,  great  hopes,  great  attempts, 
great  measures  of  what  is  worthy  of  man,  and  great  willingness  to 
pay  the  price.” 


NOTE  TEN 

BISHOP  LIGHTFOOT  ON  GERMAN  CRITICISM 

This  criticism  of  the  leader  of  the  modern  negative  school  of 
Germany,  is  illustrated  by  a  passage  from  Bishop  Lightfoot,  in  his 
celebrated  “Essays  on  Supernatural  Religion.”  To  those  who 
have  studied  this  book,  and  also  the  work  to  which  it  is  the  reply, 
and  who  are  capable  of  appreciating  literary  power  and  argumen¬ 
tative  ability,  Bishop  Lightfoot’s  book  is  one  of  the  great  contri¬ 
butions  of  the  last  century  to  the  historical  criticism  of  the  New 
Testament. 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


271 


On  page  24  of  “  Supernatural  Religion,”  he  says,  “  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold,  alluding  to  an  eccentric  work  of  rationalizing  tendencies 
written  by  an  English  scholar,  and  using  M.  Renan  as  his  mouth¬ 
piece,  expresses  the  opinion  that  *  an  extravagance  of  this  sort 
could  never  have  come  from  Germany,  where  there  is  great  force 
of  critical  opinion  controlling  a  learned  man’s  vagaries,  and  keep¬ 
ing  him  straight.’  I  confess  that  my  experiences  of  the  critical 
literature  of  Germany  have  not  been  so  fortunate.  It  would  be 
difficult,  I  think,  to  find  among  English  scholars  any  parallel  to 
the  mass  of  absurdities,  which  several  very  learned  German  critics 
have  conspired  to  heap  upon  two  simple  names  in  the  Philippian 
Epistle,  Euodia  and  Syntyche  ;  first,  Baur  suggesting  that  the  pivot 
of  the  Epistle,  which  has  a  conciliatory  tendency,  is  the  mention 
of  Clement,  a  mythical,  or  almost,  mythical  person,  who  represents 
the  union  of  the  Petrine  and  Pauline  parties  in  the  Church  ;  then 
Schwegler,  carrying  the  theory  a  step  further,  and  declaring  that 
the  two  names,  Euodia  and  Syntyche,  actually  represent  these  twro 
parties,  wrhile  the  true  yoke-fellow  is  St.  Peter  himself ;  then  Volk- 
mar  improving  the  occasion,  and  showing  that  this  fact  is  indicated 
in  their  very  names,  Euodia,  or  ‘  Rightwray,’  and  Syntyche  or 
*  Consort,’  denoting  respectively  the  orthodoxy  of  the  one  party  and 
the  incorporation  of  the  other  ;  lastly,  Hitzig,  lamenting  that  the 
interpreters  of  the  New  Testament  are  not  more  thoroughly  imbued 
with  the  language  and  spirit  of  the  Old,  and  maintaining  that  these 
two  names  are  reproductions  of  the  patriarchs  Asher  and  Gad — 
their  sex  having  been  changed  in  the  transition  from  one  language 
to  another — and  represent  the  Greek  and  Roman  elements  in  the 
Church,  while  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  itself  is  a  plagiarism 
from  the  Agricola  of  Tacitus.  When  therefore  I  find  our  author 
supporting  some  of  his  more  important  judgments  by  the  authority 
of  Hitzig  and  Volkmar  and  others,  I  have  my  own  opinion  of  the 
weight  which  such  names  should  carry  with  them.  It  is  not,  how¬ 
ever,  against  the  eccentricities  of  individuals  except  so  far  as  these 
can  be  charged  to  a  vicious  atmosphere  and  training,  that  I  would 
rest  the  chief  stress  of  my  complaint.  The  whole  tone  and  spirit 
of  the  school  in  its  excess  of  scepticism  must,  I  venture  to  think,  be 
fatal  to  the  ends  of  true  criticism.”  Again  in  a  note  upon  the 
above  Asher  and  Gad  theory,  he  says,  “The  author’s  conclusions 
are  supported  by  an  appeal  to  the  Hebrew,  Arabic,  Syriac,  and 


272 


NOTES  TO  LECTURES 


Armenian  languages.”  The  learning  of  this  curious  pamphlet 
keeps  pace  with  its  absurdity.  If  the  reader  is  disposed  to  think 
that  this  writer  is  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at  the  methods  of  the 
modern  school  to  which  he  belongs,  he  is  checked  by  the  ob¬ 
viously  serious  tone  of  the  whole  discussion.  Indeed  it  is  alto¬ 
gether  in  keeping  with  Hitzig’s  critical  discoveries  elsewhere.  To 
this  same  critic  we  owe  the  suggestion  that  the  name  of  the  fabu¬ 
list  .Esop  is  derived  from  Solomon’s  “hyssop  that  springeth  out 
of  the  wall.”  I  Kings  4  :  33. 

Surely  we  may  agree  with  Bishop  Lightfoot  that  it  is  impossible 
to  maintain  intellectual  respect  for  writers  who,  upon  a  subject  of 
such  import  and  dignity  as  that  of  Biblical  criticism,  commit 
themselves  to  irreverent  and  irrational  fancies. 


END  OF  NOTES 


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